Of Angels and Phantoms
by dearest-harley
Summary: Her feet are dangling over the edge, her throat clasped within the metal of a once trusted friend, and yet the usually brave and strong Vivi can't fight back. In her last moments, Vivi is more helpless and vulnerable than ever. Yet she sees before her a life worth living.
1. Before I Fall

Chapter 1: Before I Fall

"Arthur, how did we end up like this?"

The girl's lost voice cried deeply into the gaping darkness before her, slipping into the caverns and through the green fog ahead to swirl around the jagged stalagmites swiftly and with divine purpose. With every simple breath that left her lips, a flurry of mist fell away to avoid the winged words that fluttered through the cavern bravely, but the twists and turns of the path it travelled found her speech lost, never reaching the boy she called out so brokenly to. Her hands reached out for him if her words wouldn't, stretching as they always did, just as they had many times before. He did not hear or feel her, but if he had, he did not acknowledge it.

He didn't even turn around.

She felt her voice crack like kindling, raising it from a dry throat as fear began to grip her chest, a wicked hand trapping the dove within her beating chest, a snake coiled around a frightened mouse.

"Arthur, listen to me!"

Her words left dust to dance in what little light the cavern offered, and with his name called, the golden head turned to look at the girl through eyes green with envy, jealousy, greed, and a sick sense of pride. His skin was tainted with the hues of possession and desire, and beneath the mask of a companion, the girl found nothing but the flashing of bright eyes turning dark to match the cavern they resided in. Her legs were screaming at her to run, her head shouting that she needed to leave and protect herself, but something in the way the boy moved was familiar, something in the way he fought was brave. There was still an inkling of hope in the shards of her heart, and so she overlooked the tainted skin before her so that he might prove to her that he was still in there, that the boy she cared so deeply for was still alive within the abyss of a lost soul.

He was smiling wickedly, his head tilted ever so slightly as he began to approach without footsteps, floating in the mist like a phantom. His expression jerked every so often as the boy within tried to fight back, tried to regain control, but he was too far gone and held too much doubt in his fragile heart to truly make a stand. The girl grabbed onto this little act, her hope rising as she called out once again to the friend held captive behind the mask of green despair.

"Please, Arthur, you can stop this."

The monster lifted a hand to his face, freezing as the words left her mouth to grip at his face wildly. He looked down into a puddle on the floor with eyes wide and tearful, frowning and fighting with all the might the little lion could muster from within the jaws of the dragon, but his attempts were crushed by the jaws that locked him so powerfully behind their fangs. The grinning demon closed his eyes as he regained control quietly, expelling totally from his mind the futile struggles of the boy within. Again, he looked at the girl with a smile of true wickedness, and again he began to float towards her with fog billowing out from beneath him.

This was not Arthur anymore, not in the slightest sense.

"You don't understand him, Viv. You never did."

He finally spoke, the usually timid voice now loud and without stutter or fluctuation as it filled the cavern completely, sending a pulse throughout. His head had raised the slightest as the boy within began to struggle once more, showing upon his face the war between parasite and host with a smile and a frown, an eye of terror and an eye of delight, half content and half terrified. He was slowing down now, drawing closer but at less of a pace, and the girl took this to mean her friend was winning. Once more her voice rose up to greet the boy, and once again it reached the demon instead.

"I can try to understand, Arty, just give me another chance. Give us another chance."

This was the push the demon needed, spreading throughout the body with a flare of anger and passion. His speed was frightening, a wind whipping through the cavern and tugging at the girl, pushing him towards her as the fog swirled in confusion around its master. With every beat of her heart, the girl watched as her friend fluctuated fluidly between grimace and grin, pleading and pleasured, but to no avail: the demon still held control of the body, and as her companion's struggles grew more frantic and sporadic, the monster stopped just inches from the girl in blue. There was a deadly pause with nothing to be heard but the beating pulse of the courageous one, but as she lifted her chin bravely to defy the one so near her face, so dangerously close, she was pushed hard against the wall with a metal hand gripping her neck tightly. When she sputtered, the one holding her captive laughed quietly to himself, the grin of a demon spreading further and further across the gaunt face of the boy. With her struggles he tightened his grip around her soft skin, baring his teeth ferally at her with the pureness of hatred filling his eyes completely.

"You betrayed him, Viv. You raised this boy up then left him to fall," the girl blinked as the pressure entered her head, clawing at the metal hand that would not budge as her mind readied itself to burst. When her eyes opened again, she was no longer next to the stalagmites and fog, but above them, held precariously by the prosthetic limb over the edge of a tall cliff, "and for that, I will do what the boy doesn't have the nerve to. We will watch you fall."

Her feet dangled in the air, kicking as hard as they could as her eyes searched the ground below frantically for a safe escape. The Mary Janes that clung to her feet gave in, falling down to land noiselessly in the fog below, and the girl could feel herself growing fainter with every breath stolen from her. As she was beginning to feel cold, her arms fell away from the fingers clasping her throat and to her side in a last flag of defeat, the final show of giving up truly. The once bright blue eyes grew grey with faint sleep, and as she took her final gasping breath, Vivi's life flashed before her eyes.


	2. Storms We Cannot Weather

Chapter 2: Storms We Cannot Weather

"Hey V, wake up."

She burst awake, eyes widening violently as the girl began flailing and struggling and searching the area for a means of escape. Adrenaline was bursting through her veins, and the tiny heart within her chest was fit to burst at the rate it was running at, grabbing at anything she could with hands numb from the cold. Her throat was now wide open and exposed, but she was still gasping for air, and as she grabbed onto the handle of the door with the intent of bolting, she began to recognize where she was. No longer was she in a state of danger, but nestled safely between the cushions of the front seat of the Mystery Skulls van: a place that was safe, something calming. She sunk back into her seat, releasing the door as she allowed the light whirring of the empty freeway beneath their tires lull her back into a state of relaxation. What had just happened to frighten her so?

"You alright there? We're only thirty miles away from our next job, one day earlier than expected. Thought we could sleep at the rest stop up ahead and have Arthur drive us into town tomorrow morning. Sound good?"

Lewis still had a hand placed protectively over Vivi's shoulder, restraining the girl and preventing her from ramming her head into the windshield just above her, his eyes still on the road as she woke from her nightmare. Usually, it took the world ending to wake Vivi up from a deep sleep, and so the large boy had been prepared to put his football player-esque weight into shaking his friend awake, maybe a few raps on the mainly metal ceiling with a watch or a ring would get her to her feet, or a cold drink to the side of her neck. Still, something beside his touch had risen her from slumber, and the blue-headed girl was now looking around disorientedly.

As she came fully to her senses, the freeway still flashing beneath them, she fully absorbed what the boy had said with a little bit of confusion, "If we're stopping to sleep, why'd you wake me up, Lew?" She yawned, stretching her arms out wide and curling her toes as she tapped the pink-haired boy playfully on his cheek, smiling at him through drooping eyelids.

He smiled a little bit, taking his eyes off of the road to look at her fondly and push her hand out of the way before merging onto the exit ramp towards the rest stop, "Because you asked me to, sleepyhead."

"Oh. Yeah, I remember now." She scratched her stomach, embarrassed by her forgetfulness and feeling the hunger pains as they rose to remind her in their own way. That evening, she had fallen asleep hungry after Mystery had found their secret stash, and even if she had her dinner, Vivi would never pass up the chance for food.

Lewis parked on the far side of the lot, a beautiful park-like rest area surrounded by thin forests and thick grasses, a stop that had clearly been well taken care of by those who owned it. The Mystery Skulls had seen some pretty skuzzy places on the road, but this place was actually really nice; if it had been warmer, Vivi probably would have tried to convince Lewis to gaze at the stars with her. As the old van was brought to a screeching halt upon the pavement, Lewis jumped out of his seat and into the chill of the mid-October air, a flurry of fallen leaves dancing around him in a sort of greeting as he quickly set to work turning the back of their van into a bed. Vivi, nearly skipping as she hurried over to the vending machines along the concrete walls of the bathrooms, was looking around in content wonder, just a little more appreciative of the world around her-whatever she had dreamed about, she was glad to be alive and in such a beautiful, safe place.

The girl paid for two granola bars, got three by luck, and began heading back to her boxy orange home. Lewis' backside was sticking out of the back gate as he rummaged around in the blankets and pillows he had thrown down, setting it up as best he could to resemble a warm, comforting mattress with sleeping bags and comforters galore.

"I got you one." She lied, knowing full well that Lewis would decline her offer for the granola bar as he always did. Vivi could eat twice as much as Lewis, and so it had become a habit of his to give her his share of a meal even if he probably needed it more. Just as she expected, he shook his heavily gelled head and continued to lay down the blankets with a gentleness that wasn't necessarily required for the task, taking the job very seriously as he made the back of the van into a sleeping space rivaled only by the comfiest of mattresses.

The Mystery Skulls van was old, but volatile, and when Lewis got his hands on it and began to transform it from a ratty, dilapidated Westy, into a nest of warmth and closeness, there was nothing on earth that could compare in comfiness. Lewis had a special touch with the car, and whereas Arthur kept it from falling apart totally, Lewis turned it into a small, compacted, travelling home. Vivi preferred sleeping in the car to some of the sketchy places they had stopped at before and come to know so well, feeling a lot safer surrounded by her friends than alone in a big, empty room. Even if the boys were only a door or two down, she felt so lonely and cold when it was just her and Mystery, her dog; not to mention she loved to cuddle the two younger boys, three if you counted the eager mascot.

Arthur, their last companion, was dozing on the couch seat behind the driver's side, snoring very softly to himself with his ginger head wrapped tightly in his arms and his elbows resting on his knees. He was curled up so small, compacted into a little, invisible box by habit rather than necessity. Their friend was the opposite of Vivi in many ways, and whereas she could sleep through a hurricane, he was a very light sleeper and often couldn't even sleep in a moving car with all of the noises going on about him: this changed when he stayed up for two days straight without so much as a wink of rest. Vivi was just glad that he had, in fact, found the time and state of mind to partake in slumber-she knew he was falling ill after depriving himself of most basic needs, and after he downed ten energy drinks the day prior, she was pretty certain he needed this rest more than anything.

Vivi's dog, Mystery, was curled up by Arthur's feet with his head resting on top of the boys shoes, eyes looking up at Lewis and Vivi as they prepared the back for sleeping with the attention of a sentinel. His little bunny tail wagged rapidly back and forth as Vivi approached the two, munching noisily on her granola bar while she climbed into the back of the van and grabbed a large comforter before Lewis could lay claim to it. With the gentleness of a kiss of morning dew upon the abandoned webs spun by spiders, she tucked the comforter around both the man and the dog, feeling the chill of the air outside and knowing they must feel it, too. With her best friend and tiny companion taken care of, Vivi offered a hand to Lewis and pulled him into the back of the van with a very strong grip and a pat on the back.

Crawling into their sleeping bags, the two huddled together beneath layer and layer of blanket, curled into tight balls with faces towards each other in the hope that their breath and warmth would heat each others' frozen noses and chilled chins. Their extremities had grown numb with the cold, and they wrapped as much of each other as they could in their arms, attempting to retain some warmth as it left their bodies in synchronized waves. They shivered together, trying to take their mind off of how cold the floor of the van was, waiting for the blankets to do their magic and keep the two from catching too many colds. At some point, Mystery slipped between the two, fitting like a puzzle piece between the curled in bellies of his owner and friend as he attempted to donate his own warmth to them, but as time passed, it was still too chilly.

Lewis inhaled sharply, looking down at Vivi with bright pink eyes as he tried to pull his own thoughts away from how insanely cold he was, "Vivi, how did you and Arthur meet?" he whispered, still wide awake as he pulled his sleeping bag just a little bit closer to his chin, "He said you met a long time before I knew either of you, yet you guys are like night and day. How did you two actually, you know, tolerate each other for so long?"

The girl reached up to tussle her hair quickly before pulling her fingers back into the growing warmth of the blankets. This was a little hard for her, the time she met Arthur being her all time low in terms of emotional stability. Even thinking back to her childhood was hard with the memories she had made there, and she kind of wished that she didn't have them to begin with. She looked at her hands, hardly opening her eyes as she spoke silently to her friend, "Well, you know I lived in the slums my whole life. My mother was dead, my father was as good as dead...I didn't really have anyone in my life at that point. I guess I felt I needed to protect anyone who was anywhere as lonely as me, without friends or family or hope-I wanted to make a connection," Vivi pushed her glasses onto the couch's armrest, exposing her torso to the cold once more before diving back into the comfort of the nest she rested in, "I saw him walk beneath my window every day for three years, even prior to being so lonely. One day, a pack of bullies followed him with no good intentions, and so I beat them up before they could do the same to him."

Lewis looked genuinely surprised, his eyes widening as he looked at the short, chubby girl in front of him, "You, really?"

She nodded, "Yeah, I'm actually really muscular beneath all of this fluff, you kind of have to be in a place like where I grew up," her eyes were closed again, and she was smiling to herself with fondness towards the memory, the moment she had found someone to love like family, "I jumped off of my balcony and landed in front of him, taking the punch that was thrown at him before it could reach the poor kid. He says he thought I was an angel, the way I fell from the sky like that." She finished, speaking as silently as was possible for the naturally boisterous young lady. Lewis was smiling with laughter in his throat.

"I can see that."

Vivi mimicked his grin, blushing and smiling profusely as she continued, "He said my arms were thrown back like spread wings, and my headband a blue halo on the top of my head. Afterwards, i guess we two lonesome teens just became best friends." she was smirking into her blanket, continuing to recall the good memories, "We have our rituals: every Friday, we eat at a restaurant, where he has to order his own food and at least try to look the waiter in the eyes, and whenever we have a TV we have to play Mario Kart, but I always beat him. We've been like that for at least ten years, now that I think about it. I was eleven and he was nine."

Lewis yawned, tightening his grip on his blankets and looking at Vivi through half closed eyelids, "What about Mystery?"

"I basically just found him on the side of the road in a box labelled 'free'. He was the last mutt of the litter, I don't know why no one wanted him," Vivi recalled to Mystery's chagrin, clearly insulted by the name she had called him and any of his brethren, if they existed, "Sorry, bud, but it's true: I have no clue what the hell you are. I dyed him all up when Arthur told me to turn his hair that amber-orange color for fun, and we all really liked the red along with the black and white when it was all said and done." She patted the dog on the back with a rough hand, knowing that he wouldn't mind the extra bit of attention. The dog looked as though he were going to hold a grudge, but after glaring at her for a bit, he forgave the insult and continued to snooze between the two.

Lewis was quiet for a time, strolling through his own mind at a leisurely pace along his memories, thoughts, and dreams. He looked around the van, and it hit him that, just a few months ago, he would never have imagined a life like this, sighing to himself in his little state of bliss, "I can't believe how fast all of this is going. I mean, I didn't even know you three a few months ago, and here we are, hundreds of miles from home and sleeping in the back of a little old van. It's all kind of surreal, but I feel like I've known you both forever." Lewis wandered, looking up at the ceiling happily. Even if it was unexpected, he couldn't say that this life wasn't the most fun he'd ever had, and he was actually kind of relieved that he could distance himself from his family, if even just a little bit.

"I guess we were all ready for a new friend. I don't know about Arthur, but I was starting to feel a little lonely with only him and I hanging out for so many years, I just had to...I don't know, spread my wings a little, find someone new to latch onto. Plus, you know so much useful stuff about ghosts…"

"It runs in the family alongside a love of spicy food and the size-of-a-giant gene. My abuela hunted them full time, you know, travelling all around the continent and learning and trying all these new techniques. She left me so many amazingly annotated books; I just had to read them, add my own input and findings alongside hers, if there was anything she possibly missed," his gaze turned thoughtful, "maybe someday, I'll pass it onto my children, or grandchildren even. How cool would that be, just a family of ghost hunters."

Vivi nodded, glancing back over at her best friend on the couch, his snoring growing louder as the night progressed. Even if he could be a buzzkill during haunts, she really loved having him here, and she couldn't imagine not having all four of them together, "I'm so glad that Arthur agreed to come along in the first place. He hates anything mysterious, scary, supernatural-well, you've seen him in even the tamest haunted houses, he's near tears. I tried to get him to go ghosthunting with me all throughout our knowing each other, but he was adamant about staying safe and only taking jobs he knew for a fact weren't haunted. He was too busy trying to keep himself safe, he never really explored."

"I don't think that's necessarily true," Lewis interjected, thinking aloud and surprising himself with how accusatory his tone sounded, "I think he just wanted to keep you out of any trouble he couldn't get you out of, and thats why he came along with us in the first place. To keep you safe in a way, to make sure you didn't end up dead or in pain. He's just keeping an eye out for his friend is all."

Vivi shook her head, somewhat irritated by the thought, "Maybe, but it's not like he needs to protect me. I'm more than strong enough to protect him and myself both."

Lewis was yawning again as Vivi curled her knees even closer to her chest, blue eyes growing tired as her blankets reached the optimal temperature and she began to relax even deeper into the soft nest around her, "There are storms we cannot weather by ourselves. I'm sure you'll need him someday just as much as he needed you back then, and he understands that too."

With that thought, Vivi began to daydream of the future they would hold together and what it would mean for the four of them as they travelled around, scrambling for jobs and exploring the unknown. Money was scarce, but what they lacked in material wealth was made up with closeness and hope. They were far from their place of origin, hardly a memory within their young heads of the life they shared apart prior to, but with their wide hearts they made a home. Each of them had given up what might have been bright futures, lives of normalcy and comfort, for an adventure into the great darkness. None of them truly understood what they were stepping into, and frankly, none of them cared so long as they were all together in the end.

Vivi had been the manage of a used comics and books store, climbing the ranks after illegally working there at the age of thirteen by winning the hearts of her customers and coworkers, transforming with her smile the old and near abandoned store into the most beloved shop in town. With every moment she could spare, she learned of the supernatural world, reading books both fictional and probably real with wide eyes and the hope of a future shared with the ghosts and phantoms she so adored. After years upon years of research, speculation, and a little bit of doubt, she had left behind a well paying job and a brand new apartment for a best friend, a stranger, and a van of what to her was gold. Every ounce of her soul had gone into the making of this team, and she loved with every bit of her heart the life she had stumbled so blindly into.

Arthur, only nineteen, was well on his way to inheriting his Uncle Lance's mechanic shop, running it himself half of the time and fixing vehicles in back with the little bit of time he had left. The boy had a gift with metal, and knew the maze within the hood of a car as though it were a children's ten-piece puzzle: it was a little too easy without any form of challenge to him. When the old orange Westy came into the shop with an order for scrap metal and overall destruction, nothing could've stopped Arthur from taking on the project, and with a little bit of pleading on his part, his Uncle gave it to him as an early Christmas gift. Painted in his color and made to run good as new, he had left his world behind in the rearview mirror of the orange van, trading everything he knew and thought he loved for the love of the best friend he knew he couldn't live without. Nothing but Vivi kept him in this, even as Lewis grew on him, and Arthur was always stuck with one foot in the door in preparation to bolt.

Lewis, after graduation, had worked as a waiter, dishwasher, and very occasional chef in his father's restaurant. After his amazing achievements academically in school, Lewis had big plans with a letter to Harvard in his abnormally large palms, hoping to one day bring smiles to the faces of sick and injured children as a pediatrician through one of the best pre-med schools in the world. When his parents had called upon him to help keep the restaurant running, knowing they couldn't keep up shop without their multi-tasking master and secretly not wanting to lose him, he couldn't say no, and so when he found his grandmother's books just waiting to be read and an eager young ghosthunter wannabe, a part of him knew he needed to free himself of the responsibility and worry that came as the eldest son in a young family. His siblings were older now, his dreams as a doctor smothered in the strong-smelling spices of the kitchen, and the boy needed to truly spread his wings out, to experiment in a world of the unknown. He had given up the only thing he had ever known, his family with their trust wavering in him, for the thrill he had never received while babysitting and waiting tables. His love for them may have been an ocean, but sometimes you need the land to stand upon, a stage with which to raise yourself up; with ghosthunting, Lewis got just that.

Their new lives as adults fell as soon as they dawned, yet with the inferno and burning ash came the freshness of the soil and a promise of pure revival and growth. Vivi truly believed that, together, they could take any and all hardships that dared to attempt to sink her ship and fight through any situation or shadowy figure that might arise, just because they had each other. As she dozed, eyes growing heavy with the tiredness of lead, the blue girl grew optimistic and bright, and when her eyes finally closed she wore a smile on her face all throughout the night.

Everything would turn out fine.


	3. A Portrait of the Ordinary

Chapter 3: A Portrait of the Ordinary

As Vivi dreamed, she saw Lewis for the first time.

It was a nearby memory, surfacing to the top of her mind from only five months prior at a home long since abandoned and probably better forgotten: the high school all three of them had gone to at one point in their lives, if graduating at different years. Arthur, a super senior by only a few credits, was forced to stay in the prison-like confinement by the pleading of his mother and uncle while Lewis, the straight A student, had despised the added stress and responsibility maintaining a stellar GPA had imposed upon him. To the girl in blue, though, her whole life had started in the high school of the small town they all originated from, even if she had this realization after she had graduated. With this high school, she had taken a step into becoming a ghost hunter, and had gained a valued friend along the way.

Arthur was by her side like he always was in these sticky situations, hands in his pockets as he smuggled the alumni into the school he was still, at nineteen, forced to go to, her having graduated three years before him. They had entered the school unnoticed with the custodians and teachers recognizing Arthur and probably assuming the very brightly dressed girl to be his sibling or friend, not caring enough anyway as the two wandered the halls in search of the fabled haunt, the mystery that Vivi had spent the entire week thinking about. She knew, with that sense of intuition she had always believed one hundred percent in, that this day was very, very important.

They tried to act casual and cool in the hallways with the few stragglers lagging behind, strolling to clubs and teachers' rooms for tests only a few minutes after the last bell had rung and they were out for the weekend. It wasn't until the two found their way into the boy's bathroom on the second floor, the English wing, that they began to pull out piles of equipment from their backpacks, purses, and pockets of all sorts. With laptop and machines in hand, they were ready to hunt for the supernatural that might lurk within the confines of this horrid institution. Vivi daydreamed of the angry ghosts of students working together to make those who were still victim to the horrors of learning into ghosts themselves, freeing tearful calculus and biology students from a fate worse than death; or, maybe, the gripping tale of a teacher who worked himself to death over grading papers, trying to warn his coworkers of the doom that would meet them if they tried to hard. Head swimming with dreams and tales, the two began working as quickly and effectively as two amateurs could.

"Okay, is everything set up, Arty? EVP recording? EMF beeping?" Vivi whispered to her companion with wonder filling her sky blue eyes, curiosity and awe rolling off of her in contagious waves of optimism and attempted professionalism. She straightened herself out, trying to present herself as a completely-in-control adult, "I'll try and talk to the ghost, try and communicate in some way. You ready?"

Arthur glanced around the bathroom he had skipped class in, not seeing anything that amazing in the tiled floors and poorly painted walls, "What is this, the case of Moaning Myrtle?" he scoffed silently.

The girl shot a sideways glance at her best friend, taking this moment very seriously as he began snickering at his own joke and trying his hardest to get her into his little bout of laughter. She faked a laugh, thick with sarcasm, and walked into the handicapped bathroom stall with her ridiculous coworker tagging closely behind. Once inside, she closed the door and set down the laptop and gear, grabbing only a laser thermometer as the devices the two had set up began to beep slowly and consistently, showing that they were ready for whatever the blue girl threw at them. Vivi swept her laser thermometer through the room, standing on the toilet in order to get a full view of the bathroom with the laser passing over everything. There was nothing yet.

She cleared her throat, somewhat terrified as she did so. If the descriptions were anything to go by, there was always some sort of banging about in the stalls despite there not always being someone inside, and people found strange and cryptic messages hidden in places that were impossible to reach without a ladder. This was all word of mouth, picked up by Arthur as he went by with his daily life in the school he so hated, and Vivi had the sneaking suspicion that he had lied to her in order to get off with an easy, non-existent hunt. Still, it sounded like pretty ghosty stuff to Vivi, and even if her first time ghost hunting was a lie, she would still appreciate the experience with Arthur. Her voice began to falter as she spoke up, fearing that she might not be addressing them correctly as she lifted her voice into the noiselessness of the bathroom.

"Is there anyone in here?" She asked, excitement filling the caution that had left her paralyzed before. As long as she could remember, Vivi had loved exploring the unknown and venturing onto the paths less travelled by those around her, but never had she ever dared to raise her voice to the supernatural. She was awaiting an answer in any form-a thump, a bump...maybe even a voice in the tragically empty bathroom-just something to show her that she wasn't in fact crazy and that, with a little time, maybe she could come to understand the world she was so curious and in the dark about. With every ounce of her tiny being, she hoped with the determination of a child that someone would answer back to her, that someone would help her to truly understand what she so adored and worshipped.

"...Yes?"

Vivi felt her excitement flare like a fire fed with gasoline, nearly stumbling off of the toilet as the burst of surprise overcame her and Arthur both in the flames of disbelief and wonder. With eyes bright as candles and her voice nearly squeaking with anticipation at the hunt ahead, she didn't take time to notice that none of the monitors had hinted at paranormal activity, and she definitely didn't stop to ponder that ghosts never actually spoke to humans in a way that they could truly understand upon hearing. She was so caught up in her joyful paradise, so stuck in the heat of the moment, that Vivi was lost in the possibilities that were now presented before her.

"Who are you?" She steadied her voice, trying to ask as quickly as her control might allow. This was no time to show that she was weak or easily swayed for fear that the ghost might latch onto that excitement, that willingness to expose herself to the supernatural-she had read that in one of the books at her work, one that had been recommended heavily by its seller. Even if the man had appeared to be lying, she didn't want to test the fates in a situation like this.

As she waited for an answer, there was a very disheartening silence, the voice hesitating for much longer than a few heartbeats to gather his thoughts before speaking back to the eager young woman. With every passing moment, Vivi began to lose faith in anything supernatural actually being in this stuffy little bathroom, wondering if maybe she had heard nothing. Had it just been a toilet flushing in the girl's restroom right next door? Were they standing on the toilet of the boy's bathroom for no reason? The blue girl honestly did not want to know the answer unless it was positive.

Then, from the silence there was a voice, divine upon her ears and more than enough to reassure Vivi that she was not, in fact, alone in this bathroom, "Uhm, my name is Lewis."

Whoever this phantom was, he sounded terribly uncomfortable and confused; not exactly the bumping and thumping monster Vivi had expected when she had pictured the job, but you can't always get everything in life. She guessed that maybe he was a very controlled spirit taking into consideration him having a clear, human-like voice and the ability to mimic emotions as he did. Her eyes closed happily, and she smiled wider than the world could possibly handle.

Arthur broke her glee, giving her legs a brisk shake as she stood their humming happily to herself, "Viv, I don't think-"

"Shush, Art! You might scare it away. I got this." Vivi defended, pulling her shoulder away from the grasp of her companion somewhat aggressively and without truly hearing him out, knowing he would want to bolt now that his rumors and speculation had ended up being true. Once again she raised her voice with her friend gripping her socks for dear life, "Now, spirit, what do you want in this realm?"

The pause was even longer this time, spanning several painfully slow and aching seconds with nothing but the beating of her wild heart and the grinding of Arthur's teeth. Vivi knew the ghost was there, she knew he had entered the bathroom and was willing to talk, but what would his purpose be? Her hands tightened their grip on the thermometer, and the voice began to answer back with speech a little quieter and just a tad embarrassed. Vivi knew that she would worship these words, the final wish of a wandering soul trapped within the plane of human existence, for the rest of her career in ghost hunting and possibly the rest of her life.

"I really just need to piss is all."

Arthur smacked his face hard and dramatically with a hand, looking at Vivi through the cracks of his fingers with mingled disappointment and a little bit of an 'I told you so' attitude. Despite these actions denoting superiority as though Arthur was bragging, his own embarrassment of believing for even a moment that there was a ghost in the bathroom seeped from his pores like a wild sweat on a sweltering hot summer day. Arthur was blushing just as hard, if not harder, than Vivi herself.

"Oh." she looked down with her eyes closed and her teeth biting her lip gently, avoiding eye contact with Arthur as her face began to resemble a ripe tomato, contrasting heavily with the blue of her hair and dress, "Well, go ahead then."

This silence was a lot deeper than anything she had experienced before, the many tones of embarrassment rendering it much longer and quieter than it should have been. You could hear a pin drop on the tile floors surrounding the three young adults, and after a few very long, awkward moments, the sound of liquid hitting porcelain rang throughout with the echoing boom of thunder, louder than it should've been without anything to cover it up. As a zipper snap, the sink run, and the door open and close in farewell, Vivi and Arthur broke into possibly the world's most ridiculous and uncontrollable fit of laughter, leaving the two gasping for air.

When they finally exited the bathroom, sides heaving and breathing heavy and laborious, a very well-built man with a face much redder than Vivi's had ever been was waiting for them to arrive. His amazingly pink hair accented the hues of blush upon his cheeks, and overall, the pompadour-wearing buffoon looked very goofy as he confronted the two on the happenings of the bathroom. With his appearance less than intimidating and the situation something to laugh at, he wasn't a threat to Arthur, and Lewis had entered their lives with stomach screaming with laughter and little to no warning or transition.

One day, he was non-existent. The next, a valued friend.

Even if Arthur hadn't immediately fallen head over heels for their new friend, visiting the school to find his younger brother and using the bathroom when he had failed to locate him, he had grown tolerant of their new coworker with time and even came to call him a friend as he learned that, just maybe, he could trust the oaf with the build of a weight lifter. He granted him privileges that even Vivi wasn't allowed, things that he felt he could only bestow to Lewis and Lewis alone, such as driving the Mystery Skulls van or sleeping in the motels with him as money situations required. They even sometimes confided secrets in each other, but mainly their time was spent screaming at a television set with Gamecube controller in hand. As the second month ended and Arthur truly felt that he could fully accept Lewis, he gave to him the greatest gift the socially awkward teen could gift, a shiny new nickname made especially for him.

Somehow and by some great chance, the three opposites had come together, and by some fate they just happened to fit together perfectly without force or struggle. If Vivi and Arthur were day and night, Lewis was the twilight in between that was neither and both at the same time. Without him, they had been the force that held each others world together, but as he crept upon them and embraced the two shorties close to his chest, Lewis had brought them even closer together by appealing to both. With him, they became more than a force necessary to survive: they became happy, purely, simply, and truly.

* * *

"Rise and shine, lazybones!" Arthur shouted, lifting a hand and banging loudly on the roof of the van with his metal rings and a grin lighting his usually frowning face, "Pinky, can you give her a shake or two? You know how that girl is."

She was still dozing, in that state of unfocus yet strange awareness and presence without a true plan or purpose in life, what to her was the greatest plane of existence. This came to an end as the words sank in and she realized her fate and what was to come. Opening her eyes swiftly and throwing her torso forward in a display of utter awakeness, Vivi cried out before anyone could lay a hand on her, "I'm up, I'm up!"

Lewis was leaning over to give her a firm push or two, planning in his head how he would wake her up this morning. He had to admit, coming up with new, creative ways to break her from slumber was always a fun activity, and her recent ability to rise at will was somewhat of a downer to the boy as he leaned back into the couch cushions. To Vivi, it was a relief.

Arthur was driving now, his orange teased hair sticking out from his short body and over the back of the seat like a beacon of flames calling to the Mystery Skulls and leading them onwards towards their next job. His hands, clenched firmly on the wheel, rocked back and forth just slightly, a very unique and interesting way in which he kept his car on the road with the slight wiggling of the van, back and forth. In the rearview mirror, Vivi saw his orange eyes flick up to look at her and fill with laughter as he steadied his gaze back onto the road ahead, finding something about his friend humorous as he continued to drive.

"Nice hair, Smurf. I daresay it rivals the mop of our friend Lewis in ridiculousness, A+ to you my friend."

She pulled her hands to her head quickly, knowing beforehand how silly her hair could turn out after a night spent tossing and turning in the van without the confines of a mattress and the fear of falling off. Her hands tussled the soft yet noticeable kinks and overall random placement of her fluffy locks as the van bounced along, her face sporting a bright new smile as she pictured how messy she must look.

"How long until we're there, Arty?"

The ginger looked down at the map on his knee, tracing the forest paths with his eyes while keeping trace of the road in front of him, a dangerous but fairly easy task. With venom in his voice, still a little bit offended by the hit on his proud hairdo, Lewis answered back quickly before Arthur could gather his bearings and report his findings back to their leader, Vivi, "About five minutes."

Arthur glared a little bit at the older boy, wondering if maybe he should retaliate himself but thinking better of it and looking back at the road with no more than a little bit of a glance. He'd get back at him later.

Vivi hadn't caught their little bit of bickering, more worried about how horrible she must look to actually care, "Shit. You got a hairbrush, Lulu?"

Lewis began to rummage through his personal duffel bag of toiletries, taking almost no time in responding to the girl's request as he plunged his large hands deep into the unknown endlessness within, "Only if you stop calling me that." he teased. By the depths his arm had reached, Vivi feared his arm would never surface again from the black hole he had so carelessly entered.

"No can do, ghost-boy. It's too cute a name to give up."

She snatched the brush from his hands with a flare of attitude and a grin to match, skillfully using the rearview mirror to adjust the roaring ocean atop her calm head, attempting to tame the wildest and bluest of seas as they pushed up against her defiantly. Each stroke of her hand was a wave in the water, but like waves, her hair went back to its original and messy state with every pulse she sent through it. She fought valiantly and without mercy, but after awhile, she gave in as she usually did and placed her head band on like a crown and watched as her hair swept dramatically forward. Someday, she was going to invest in a quality straightening iron.

The car was slowing down now, bumping wildly on the gravel roads they had turned on to. Lewis was fixing his own outfit carefully, always conscious of his appearance as he straightened his neckerchief and pulled his vest down tightly over his wide, barrel chest. He was an overload of pinkish purple, like powdered grape candy, and Vivi just had to snicker at how ridiculous he could look and act sometimes.

"You look fine, Lew. Relax, we're not even meeting our clients until we finish the hunt, and even then, I'll be doing the talking. The ghosts won't care how ridiculously adorable your hair is." Vivi reassured with a little compliment, straightening him up a little herself when she went over to hand him his hairbrush again. He shook his head at the misunderstanding, running the brush through his hair himself as he did so with the tenderness of a mother to a baby.

"That's not it, I just like to look nice," He looked down at his lap in thought, placing the item back into the bag of neverending abyss,"I never had time to take care of my appearance before, what with dishes and waiting tables and babysitting and homework. Now that I have the time, I might as well make up for the years lost."

"Fair enough." Vivi backed off a little, allowing him to finish pruning his feathers carefully and attentively with a goofy smile on her face. Even if she laughed at him, she loved how much the little things mattered to him, and secretly she respected his ability to always look perfect despite the situation-it may have come naturally to him, but that didn't mean his constant grooming didn't help. He was like a movie character come to life, always in the correct light and with just the right angle...from every angle.

The van had pulled to a stop, screeching slightly as it did so and, with a tinge of childish excitement, Vivi ran to the window of the van to catch the first glimpse of their new job just as she always did. With every hunt they grabbed, her body was filled with the anticipation and adrenaline of a little kid on Christmas Eve, that inability to sleep translating to the happy humming that everyone but she noticed as she suctioned her hands to the glass. She was painfully aware of the fact that, each and every time, the houses never ended up blowing her mind like she hoped they would with their usually timid and tame outward appearance, but she still couldn't help herself. Who in their right mind would buy a clearly haunted house? Not many was the answer, and so she was often left to gawk at the most mundane of houses when they began to investigate.

This time, she was left breathless.

In front of them, a heavily gothic-style mansion rose from a thick base of black thorns and into the grey sky like a tower to the heavens, boasting its two stories and boarded windows with silent pride and glory. The inside was hidden in shadow, veiling whatever waited for them within in silence and mystery: just the thing she loved, the thing she craved most of all. The black and grey base, highlighted only by the green grass below it, left a dark and menacing impression upon the team of four, and as she gazed lovingly upon it, Vivi reveled in her dream house straight from the distant past.

"It's...beautiful." She whispered into the glass separating her from her destiny, voice growing breathy and almost non-existent as she pulled a hand to the window. With her exhale, the mansion looked as though it were covered in dog, giving it that mystical feeling she so loved and adored. Definitely and without a doubt, Vivi had fallen in love with this house.

Arthur shrugged, pulling out his orange 3DS and powering it up, "Looks pretty broken down to me, but whatever floats your boat I guess. You two got this haunt?"

Reluctantly and without tearing her eyes from her dream within reality, Vivi nodded, using all of her power to break out of her awe to grab the notes from her phone call with the clients, "We got it. Client reported multiple, lesser ghosts haunting the mansion. They don't attack, but they try and scare away anyone who enters the house: not exactly prime real estate, the guy says."

The sound of Smash Brothers rose from the driver's seat as Arthur shut off the car and turned away from his friends, not caring to mute his game as Lewis and Vivi prepared to discuss their plan of action, "Well, if it isn't too dangerous, you won't need a mechanic anyway," he turned around slightly, gesturing a goodbye to his teammates without really taking his eyes off of the screen, "go ahead, stay safe, whatever."

Vivi nodded, taking the advice very seriously as she readied herself for the possibilities ahead of her and Lewis, "Do you think we'll need any gear?"

Lewis shook his head with confidence in his own judgment, "Sounds like they're pretty tame compared to our last job. I say my abuela's methods will work just fine."

Lewis lifted the back of the van noiselessly, hopping down with a hard thud onto the gravel beneath his feet and the car's tires while Vivi, who was more in control of her weight and gravity, landed with silence and grace. From outside with the light shining magnificently and the smudges of dog slobber on the window no longer impairing her vision, Vivi observed that the house was even more beautiful and majestic that she had originally thought.

The two began to walk forward with slow steps, approaching the vines that wrapped around the house as they began to tighten protectively around the house, hugging and embracing it lovingly. This place was without a doubt haunted, and no ordinary ghost had such control over nature-even Vivi, who had only read a few accurate books on the matter, knew that this was much more serious than she had originally thought.

"Was there anything else that the client may have mentioned to you, maybe a side note that you didn't write down?" Lewis pried, approaching the doorstep timidly now. Their last ghost hunt had been described as a mischievous, sprite-like spirit with a knack for pranks but who had never actually physically harmed anybody when in all actuality, it was a very strong and very angry demon who nearly killed the three and left all but Arthur with temporary blindness and muscle spasms that they couldn't figure out how to cure for over a week. Even Mystery was left to stumble about with no way of knowing what was going on, and though they were paid handsomely, it left the team somewhat bitter and without any jobs for a lot longer than they liked to go without work.

Vivi shook her head, recalling the event herself, "The ghosts hum when they think they have an audience, but they were described as your stereotypical bedsheet type. The client gave me no reason to suspect anything more or less."

Lewis had grown thoughtful, paused in front of the thorns while his eyes observed them carefully, "The reaction of the vines is curious. Either these are very benevolent or very strong phantoms, and by the sound of it, they aren't very friendly." Lewis recalled, leaving a wide gap between him and the taunting thorns as he began walking towards the entrance to the house again. Vivi followed suit, following close behind.

"What should we do?"

Lewis thought for a moment, lifting his hand to frame his chin dramatically as he bit his lip and looked up into the distance, in every way a portrait of the most typical expressions, "I'm hoping against all odds that these ghosts are benevolent, maybe young. If that's the case, they should listen to us without much trouble on our part."

Vivi sighed a little bit, knowing that none of what he was expecting was very likely, "And if they aren't"

"Well," Lewis smiled back, gripping the door handle bravely and bracing himself to push it open, "then we run."


	4. Pale Things

Chapter 4: Pale Things

It took Lewis a few moments to gather his wandering thoughts before he could even begin to open the door into the mansion, worrying now so he didn't suffer later. He believed that many bad things could be prevented by just a little bit of foresight, and he would rather cover every base mentally right now so that he didn't run into trouble physically inside the mansion, where he wouldn't have anywhere to run. Something inside of him said that, after today's mission, he would not be the same person. Lewis really didn't know if that was a good thing or not.

After the last job they took, they had been left crippled for seven days and probably would have been six feet under if Vivi hadn't worked her magic-like intuition to save them, distracting and calming the demon they faced before dispelling it back into the netherworld where it came from. Arthur had tripped as they ran, falling directly into the demon's path and straight into the arms of a clear death when the girl had stopped running, turned around, and faced the demon with the courage of a superhero, saving her friend as though they faced raging demons every Wednesday. While Vivi had looked back upon the excursion as proof of their teamwork and an overall gripping, exciting experience, Lewis was painfully aware of how close one-if not all-of them had come to losing their life.

He glanced at his hands, large enough to completely enclose the door handle and growing slightly sweaty as the handle absorbed and reflected his heat, his mind jumping to the ghost hunt ahead of them. These ghosts could be so much more than they seemed, and Vivi might not be able to tap into that killer instinct like she had before. Lewis thought briefly of his sibling and family, along with where he would be if he hadn't met Vivi and Arthur. Harvard had opened up to him with the promise of pre-med, his father's restaurant could've been his in time, a life with a family was still a possibility if he only turned around and forgot entirely of this life he was now leading. In no way did he have to do this, he was only forced by the an obligation to an elderly woman long dead and gone, someone who wouldn't care either way.

And yet, in a way, there was no way he could turn his back to this world he had discovered. There was too much to learn, too much to see, and whereas the great adventurers of the past had continents to discover and explore, he had in front of him an entire realm of possibilities. His curiosity swelled with every word spoken from a client's mouth, every bump in the night that lead them to a new haunt, every book his abuela had left specifically for him in the hopes that he would follow in her footsteps.

Plus, Vivi loved the chase so much. He could never leave her hanging.

So, without further ado, Lewis forced the doors open slowly and then all at once with the knowledge that he had chosen his life. The iron had grown warm in his grasp, and as his muscles clenched to push the door in, Vivi huddled behind him in childish anticipation, peering over the wide shoulders of the boy and into the house she had fallen so in love with. The wood gave way, and as the cobwebs and plaster fell onto their heads from far above, Lewis watched Vivi's eyes fill with wonder just as they had early that morning.

She whispered an exclamation under her breath, entering the room as though she were entering a dance with her feet soundless upon the wooden floors and her arms spread as she tried to absorb everything that she was seeing and feeling. Her hands ran along the peeling wallpaper, striped with light and dark purple, fondling the tears and rips gently and with a curious kindness. She looked ahead and into the long hall in front of them, adorned with candles all along the wall as it spread into a beautiful and grand foyer with tall stairs and an intricate iron chandelier, the imprints of hearts shining from every corner and every painting with the happiness and promise of love. Lewis had to admit, even if it looked a little bit beat up on the outside, he felt like he belonged in this place, as though it were his home.

"How about we leave the ghosts and buy the place off of him? This mansion is gorgeous." Vivi gasped, stopping to lightly caress one of the wax candles upon the wall in the hallway, still sticking straight up from its candlestick. As she poked the wax, dry after cooling, she noticed that it was still slightly warm to the touch, "How odd…"

Lewis didn't catch that last bit, "Even haunted, we'd never have enough money to buy such a beautiful piece of land, but I do agree. This place has to be at least-"

Vivi interrupted him with a quick inhale of breath, pointing into the hallway with a hand lifted to cover her gaping mouth. Lewis whipped around to look at her, startled by the sudden noise and slightly on edge after overthinking his entrance and what might be waiting for him and Vivi inside the haunted house. As he ran through all the possibilities in his head, each one ending with Vivi dying and her gasp being the last thing he ever heard escape from her mouth, he was met not with dread and terror and loss but with a pleasing sense of stupefaction.

Just as he was turning around, the candles within the hallway began lighting themselves on by one, their flames bright and orange as they flared into life. As the rows were lit together, each new flame bounced up faster and faster, as though the anticipation of company was fueling each and every one of them to burst into existence. They greeted the two eagerly and brightly, and with the candles lit, Vivi and Lewis could see more within the beautifully crafted mansion.

As the chandelier burst into light, so pushed by the beginning of fire that it swayed back and forth with the creaking of its chain, Lewis felt a weight lifted off of his heavy chest. Just as he had expected, a ghost with such control over the nature outside of his home could only be two things: very benevolent, or very strong. With the lights switched on and the two greeted warmly, it was easy for him to see which one it was.

No monster of the night would dare hunt where the light reigns, true and fair.

He brushed himself off slightly, embarrassed by his over reaction earlier and hoping no one had noticed, "I think this place is safe enough. Should we head further, or do you think they'll come and find us eventually?"

"Uh-huh." Vivi mumbled, not quite listening to her companion as she nodded her head in an attempt to prove that she was, in fact, totally focussed on what he was saying. Hew mouth was still wide open as she walked further into the hallway, slowly teasing the flames with her hands as she watched the candles closely. Within her blue eyes, there was a spattering of curious stars that gazed into the orange flames with adoration and wonder. She was oblivious to the world around her at the moment; it was just her and that tiny candle within her own universe, her little void.

She began whispering to herself in wonderment, not even loud enough for Lewis to hear as she went through everything in her head, grasping onto the memory as it was made so she could file it away forever. He loved the way the girl reacted to every ghost hunt, even if her clear curiosity and overall lack of fear had gotten them into quite a few difficult scrapes in the past. When anything supernatural was even implied towards her, she lit up like the candles she was so immersed in without even trying to control her childish reactions and joy. Lewis had to admire her-even if he loved the paranormal, he could never run blindly into the unknown like she did. With her, everything was based on the simplest of feelings and emotions, every action she partook in due to the strong urges and recommendations of the heart that beat in her chest; with him, it was a fragile dance of rationalization and curiosity

Her passion made her beautiful in his eyes. Scratch that, she was always beautiful, but the light in her eyes when she fell in love with a mystery was a bonfire, and though the fireplace of her casual smiles and glances may be warm and bright, during her affairs with their investigations of the night she was a whirlwind of heat and light.

Lewis basked in that glow for a few moments before inhaling briskly, flinching dramatically as though he had been pushed back by an invisible palm to the chest. It hit him so suddenly, so fast, he hadn't the time to even recognize truly and fully the rush of blood throughout his extremities, the feeling of electricity from his spine that spread to the tips of his fingers and toes. He shook his head, turning away from her so that she wouldn't notice his tiny crisis while so hypnotized by her little flame. Lewis gripped a hand to his punctured heart, trying his best to pull the arrow that must of pierced it in order to make him feel so light-headed, so breathless, so out of control. It wasn't true, it couldn't be, he wouldn't let it be.

He couldn't love Vivi.

The boy tried to dissuade himself, tried to turn the emotion away with the power of his will. She was older than him, he had only known her for five months, he still didn't know that much about her or her life, he didn't want to ruin the only friendship he had really, truly had...but the heart doesn't listen to the musings of the brain, and, cheeks flushed, he looked down at the hand over his heart with a little bit of frustration.

Vivi and Arthur had found him when he needed them the most. With all the responsibilities he had faced throughout his life, never had he been given a day off to socialize and have a little bit of fun save for when he was with his siblings. Even if he had been given a little bit of freedom, everyone his age thought he was going to beat them up, what with his terrible size and shadowed face. Maybe he was just mistaking a very powerful platonic love for something more? He had never really had best friends before. It was possible, but he had to wonder whether or not it was likely.

"Lewis. Look."

The boy shook his head, ridding himself as best he could of his thoughts and worried to look back at the girl who caused so much turmoil within him. They had a job to do, and if he was going to get it done, he had to ignore anything his heart might be trying to say for at least a little while longer.

"Are you seeing this?"

Lewis could hear a low humming now, lilting throughout the mansion in a humble waltz. He hadn't fully comprehended it immediately, but as he remembered the description the clients had given him, he turned back towards Vivi with wide eyes. She stood her ground, bravery filling the eyes of the confronted as she was approached by one of the phantoms of the house. Nothing in the way she held herself resembled fear, only the courage that had Lewis so mesmerized as she was observed by the ghost in front of her. A few inches from her face, their target sang to her with a steady voice.

It was a pale thing, white as a bedsheet with eyes closed peacefully as though in sleep as it spun circles around Vivi. There was a gaping hole within its cheat, a heart-shaped indent alluding to a missing piece as it hummed, never opening its mouth yet filling the mansion so completely with his song. It was very curious of Vivi, and as its singing grew louder and more confident, he called for his brothers to appear from the walls and the shadows with the same song on their mind. Their separate harmonies creating a choir of sound, the two were soon surrounded by the voices of the dead.

Vivi's curious new friends were whirling around her lazily, their tiny arms reaching to touch her hair or pat her sweater, but never quite reaching her before backing off, stunned for a second or two before continuing their whirlpool surrounding her. They wanted so bad to touch her, but every time they tried, something pushed them away as though they had been shocked. Vivi was more excited than Lewis had ever seen her.

"I've never seen ghosts congregate like this before! And the way they try and reach out to touch me...they might not know what they are, not fully. They might not even be human spirits! Did your grandma ever say anything about non-human ghosts? I've never seen anything like them before." She had pulled a hand up to cover her chest, the fluttering of her lungs leaving her gasping with awe, "And their hearts...Lulu, it's so sad."

As she said his name, the ghosts stopped dancing around Vivi, their music pausing and their closed eyes opening to reveal a display of blazing orange, just like the still lit flames. They spotted Lewis standing a ways away from the girl, still not quite certain how he was supposed to handle the situation with his eyes wide and wary of the pale things surrounding her. They rushed to him, Vivi giggling as they swarmed the purple-haired boy with a new sort of vigor and began mimicking the behavior they had performed on her to Lewis; only this time, they fully touched him.

Their singing hurried as they caressed the boys pompadour, his arms, his back and shoulders. With each touch upon his magenta vest or stunned face, a pulse of purple-pink ran through their white bodies, the indentations of their hearts filling with an orange light as a beat attempted to start. Vivi was rambling on, observing everything with a light in her eyes and theories on her tongue while Lewis was still engrossed by the very unusual actions of the ghosts surrounding him. He hadn't read anything about this sort of behavior-this may have been a new discovery, a totally different breed of ghost that his abuela had never encountered.

They opened their mouth now, ditching the light humming they had stuck to in order to repeat one syllable over and over again, a soft 'mo'. With Lewis, their eyes stayed open and staring, observing him just as much as he did them.

Vivi, growing quiet as time went by and she lost material to talk of, watched in wonder as the ghosts began to disperse from the entryway of the mansion. Their eyes were closing as they left Lewis behind, the song coming to a silent and abrupt end as they phased through the walls, leaving just as soon as they had come without a trace of them having been there. Lewis heart sunk, his brain still fighting confusion as they left him behind.

"Wait!" he cried, trying to reach out and grab one by their tiny tail as it disappeared into a portrait of a finely dressed woman, but Vivi stopped him with a gentle touch to the shoulder. Usually, he would have ignored her and kept going, but the thoughtfulness in the way her fingers wrapped around his arm stopped him dead in his tracks, and he turned back around to look at the girl incredulously.

"It's okay. They're not ready to leave yet."

He squinted at her, not quite believing what he was hearing from the mouth of a girl who never left a mystery unsolved, "No ghost is, that's our job. We help them to find peace, to become ready," He looked to the side, relaxing his gaze as he began to question what had happened earlier, "What did they want with me? Is that the key to giving them peace, is their something I have that they want?"

Vivi shook her head with an understanding grin upon her cheeks, "They aren't your average ghosts, Lewis-they aren't human, and so they don't have desire, only duty. They're waiting for someone."

He sighed, looking at her from the corner of his eyes, "Let me guess, your intuition is working overtime?"

She nodded, "I don't know how I know, Lulu, but I just do. Count this mystery solved, even if the ghosts are still running around this place. They'll just have to wait this one out." she grabbed his hand habitually, heading again towards the door they came through, "It wouldn't be right to dispel them when they've really done no harm. They'd just become angry, then. I'd love to explore this place a little more, but now's not the time. Ready to go?"

Lewis looked down at his large hand, clasped gently within Vivi's chubby little ones. She had silenced him with the lump in his throat and the chill down his spine that he had felt when he had only just realized how he felt, unable to speak past the disorder in his mind. His face grew bright red, and he nodded quickly to try and prevent her from looking at him any longer. How would he ever be able to deal with these feelings and keep Vivi from suspecting something at the same time?

She smiled at his somewhat awkward nod, and, hands connecting the two, Lewis understood his prior premonition with a sudden stroke of lucidity. With the way he felt pumping through his veins, the Mystery skulls would never-no, could never-be the same again.


	5. Stick Shifts and Secrets

Chapter 5: Stick Shifts and Secrets

As Vivi opened up the back of the van, Mystery came out to greet them with his bunny tail wagging as much as it could at the sight of his favorite person, the girl who had taken care of him for seven years. She wrapped her arms around the dog in greeting, looking back with the expectation of riding in the back with Lewis to discuss the hunt, but instead was met with nothing as he hurried past her and into the front seat of the car.

Arthur glanced at Lewis, then at Vivi's confused and somewhat hurt face. He powered down his Smash Bros. reluctantly, knowing something was amiss, "What's up, you guys look like you saw a ghost."

Arthur loved cheesy jokes.

"Yeah, we did. Quite a few, actually, it was amazing." Vivi responded, shrugging off any sadness for her usual smile. She hovered close behind Arthur on the nearby couch, the dog in her lap.

"You guys were in and out super fast, did you get them?"

"No, they were waiting for someone."

Arthur screwed up his eyebrows before starting the car again, "You're really weird, Bubbles. You know that, right?"

Vivi's smile was definitely sincere now-she loved that nickname, "Absolutely."

As the car whirred on and Arthur began heading for the nearest town, the Mystery Skulls van was completely silent for probably the first time ever. When with friends, Arthur was a decent talker, and Lewis and Vivi could go at it for hours without breathing when it came to ghosts and the supernatural. Even when they were sleeping, Vivi chattered as if she were wide awake-this silence was terribly awkward, even for the boy who hated social interaction.

"So, uh...should we, you know, sleep in the van or get a motel tonight?" Arthur attempted conversation, lifting a hand to ruffle his ginger hair. He hated being put on the spot like this, even if technically no one was pushing him to say anything.

Vivi sat up a little, "Actually, we're kind of low on money, so we sh-"

"A motel. Let's do a motel." Lewis, blushing brightly, interrupted, "I-I need to sleep in a bed."

Again, it was silent. They exited the forest paths for the open road, and as Arthur smoothly transitioned from one gear to the other on the stick shift of the Westy, Vivi reached past him to click on the radio. In order to reach the radio, she had to reach above both Lewis and Arthur through the middle seat up front, jumping a little to give the 'on' button a push. Arthur looked beneath her to Lewis, who had turned even redder as he tried to distance himself from the girl.

No way.

Arthur didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know what was going on.

He stayed silent, looking back onto the road quietly while Maroon 5 blasted. Vivi, who had sat back down, swore under her breath and reached over again to start changing the channels, clearly not satisfied.

It took all of Arthur's willpower not to laugh like a maniac at Lewis' pained face.

She finally settled on a station, leaning back and looking at the two boys for a few moments, clearly feeling sort of left out.

_See, _Arthur thought to himself, _this is why you don't make friends. It's too awkward._

Vivi had pulled out her notebook, her hand moving viciously back and forth as she wrote down the happenings of the hunt. Her eyes scanned the page at a mile a minute. Lewis was looking out the window, clearly wanting to be left alone.

With nothing else to do, Arthur continued to drive.

The relief he felt once he merged onto the exit and into the small town of Golton was nearly tangible. There was no way they could stay silent, what with their clients waiting for the explanation they had to come up with. Really, there is no easy way to say 'hey, your house is totally haunted but we chose to let the ghosts stay since they're waiting for someone, sorry'.

"Any plans on how to address our still-haunted clients?" Arthur asked Vivi, leaning his head back against the rest of his seat. She stayed silent for a few moments more, the sound of pencil quieted by the loudness of her thoughts.

"I guess we just have to tell them the truth. If we had used a ritual to get rid of the ghosts, they would have just become angry and done more damage to both the home and anyone in it. The house is...protecting them, in a way," She looked up from her piece of paper, sighing very loudly, "Whoever they are waiting for must be very important."

Arthur shook his head, "They're ghosts, Viv. All ghosts are waiting for someone, and that someone is us. You should've gotten rid of them so we could at least receive our pay."

Vivi hit him on the arm hard, "When you join us in a ghost investigation, you can make choices like that, scaredy-cat. How far are we from the client's house?"

"He's on the other side of town by the looks of it, so ten minutes tops."

Lewis whirled around, "Can you drop me off near the motel? I didn't sleep well last night, I think I need to rest." He attempted to speak calmly, but the edge of his voice was thick with pleading.

Arthur didn't believe him one bit-Lewis looked like he was ready to burst into a sprint if anything, "Sure, whatever. You got the money?"

Vivi began rummaging through her pockets, pulling out a black wallet with the Halo of the Sun on it from Silent Hill, "I got it. How much you think you'll need to get us two rooms, one night?"

Arthur answered back, "Just give him the wallet, it should only be twenty-five dollars a room I'd guess. How much we got to last us until the next job?"

"A hundred dollars in the wallet, but the emergency stash has a bit more." She handed the wallet to Lewis, and he drew back his hand as though she had burned him. More than anything, this hurt Vivi the most.

Arthur stopped in front of the motel, but Lewis had opened the door and jumped out even before they were fully stopped. Mystery hopped out after him, probably sensing that the boy needed company. With that, Vivi and Arthur were alone as they had been for so many years prior.

Vivi climbed into the front seat as Arthur began to drive again, "Well, that was weird."

"I don't know what I did. He clearly doesn't want to look at me, or touch me...or anything, really," Vivi sighed, looking down into her lap after she pulled on her seatbelt, "I hope I didn't...I don't know, scare him off. I like having more than one friend."

Arthur threw his hands up dramatically, "Well I'm offended! I can't believe you don't want to spend the rest of your life with me and only me!" The ginger teased. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see her smirk a little bit, "Don't worry, I'm sure he's just dealing with boy stuff. I'll talk to him."

Vivi's eyes lit up, "Would you really? I know you hate confrontation…"

"You two are the only friends I got, even if you're unhealthily obsessed with the afterlife and he's a football player with poor hair choice. Can't have you making it all awkward for me now, can I?"

She was smiling again, "You're the best, Cheeto."

He groaned at that, "I hate that name so much. I'm not _that _orange, you know."

Vivi reached over to put a tuft of hair back into place on the ginger's head, "It fits too well to give up."

* * *

Arthur knocked briskly on the door pointed out to him by the lady at the front desk, leaving Vivi to sleep by herself in the room across the hall. The place was run down, broken, and overall nasty looking, but it was the only place in the small town of Golton, so it would have to do despite the very real chance that a murder might just take place, or that the very skimpy dressed lady and the very drunk man who had a bedroom next to them would be having the time of their lives. Arthur never liked to leave Vivi alone in settings such as this, but she was better at putting up with the bad motels than both Lewis and Arthur.

He hadn't yet received a key to the room, and so he was really relying on Lewis to be awake. By the amount of time he was taking to reach the door, he might not have been lying when he said he was tired. As he raised his hand to knock twice, there was pounding as something-or someone-hit the floor, and then again as a large person nearly ran to the door.

He could feel the distress of the boy through wood.

"Arthur, thank god. What took you guys so long?" Lewis whispered as Mystery nosed his way out of the room, heading straight to Vivi's still open door. Arthur squeezed in and began to empty his pockets on the table, Lewis shadowing him like a scared puppy.

"Well we did have to explain to our client that his house was still haunted and that we didn't get rid of them since the ghosts were waiting for someone, which didn't go so well. Vivi patched it up, but we still didn't get paid. Then we picked up a quick dinner with the ten dollars Vivi took out of her wallet-we got you a super burrito, but Vivi couldn't help herself." Arthur apologized.

"It doesn't matter, I really need your advice on something." Lewis, still whispering, requested. Arthur sat down hard on the bed as it screeched under his weight.

"I'm not exactly a wise sage, you know. Vivi's the one with good life advice, I just eat Doritos all day and play video games. Are you sure you shouldn't ask her about it if it's really that important?"

Lewis, pacing around the room very quickly, began to play with his fingers to avoid eye contact, "You see, that's the thing: I can't possibly talk to Vivi about this."

Arthur gestured for his friend to sit down, "Go ahead then, let's get this over with."

"Thanks," Lewis relaxed quite a bit, sitting down at the desk against the wall, "See, when Vivi and I were in the mansion, I realized something, and I don't know how to address her about it. So, could you maybe help me out a little bit in coming up with ideas?"

Arthur's eyes grew wide, "So I was right. I can't believe this."

Lewis was terribly confused, and Arthur's reaction wasn't helping one bit in calming him down. He stood up again, more distressed than ever, "What is it?"

"It's so obvious, Scarf-Boy. I mean, the way you've been avoiding Vivi, how you tried so hard to get away when she leaned over to change the radio, how quickly you drew back when she tried to give you the wallet. I didn't think it would happen so soon, but I guess it was inevitable, huh?" Arthur's voice was quiet and breathy as he spoke mainly to himself. Lewis flinched.

"Is it really that obvious? Do you think Vivi can see it?"

Arthur nodded, "You know the girl has a killer sense of ESP. She was so worried that you were disgusted by her, and I can see why you would be. Listen, Lewis, I know what she may have told you was very stunning, but don't treat Viv like this. She didn't mean to."

Lewis, no longer terrified, was just puzzled now, "Arthur, I don't think we're talking about the same thi-"

"Just hear me out here!" Arthur lifted a hand to silence his comrade, "I mean, I found it hard to talk to her for over a week afterwards, and she had been my friend for five years! But that doesn't change who she truly is. Just be proud of the fact that she confided her deepest secret in you, and treat her like you always would."

"You are totally off, Arthur. I thought you were on the right track but, my god, you're so wrong!" Lewis, somewhat flustered, raised his voice, "She didn't tell me a secret-I'd treat her the same anyway! It's just...I realized that…"

Arthur was clueless, "What?"

Lewis inhaled deeply before nearly shouting at the top of his lungs, "I love her, Arty. I love her so fucking much."

"Oh." It was Arthur's turn to be surprised. He glanced away from Lewis, somewhat conflicted about this turn of events. How could Pinky be in love with Vivi? For his entire life, Vivi had been his: she was his only friend, his best friend, his sister, his buddy, he had so much trouble sharing her with Lewis as friends, how would that change as lovers?

Then again, Vivi needed that attention. Arthur had watched her 'adopt' him, then Mystery, and finally Lewis. She searched for lonely people and tried to make them better, craving the attention that came from it in return. She had been a lonely child; maybe she needed someone to hold her at night.

Arthur closed his eyes and breathed slowly for a moment, opening them to grab Lewis' hands quickly, "Do you remember what I told you when I taught you how to drive a stick shift, Lewis?"

The boy was puzzled again, nearly pulling back from Arthur's touch, "Not to wear out the clutch?"

Arthur shook his head, "No, about Vivi."

"Oh, yeah," He remembered, "That her finding me wasn't chance."

Arthur nodded "She chose to find you. It wasn't the stars aligning to send you to the bathroom at that exact moment, and it definitely wasn't fate or destiny-she needed you for some reason, she still does. Don't ask me how that works, I don't understand the girl fully after ten years together," Arthur confessed, dropping the large hands of his friend, "Her will is the strongest force in the universe. I told her I didn't want any new friends, no ghost hunts, I didn't even want to leave home. Next day, she finds someone I can actually get along with who loves ghosts and wants to travel with us around the world? That ain't coincidence."

Lewis scratched the back of his neck, "Your point?"

"The point is, Vivi needs you, just as much as she needs me and vice versa. Whether that's platonic or romantic is for you to find out," Arthur stood up now, walking over to the TV across from the bed, "If you don't tell her, she'll figure it out eventually, so it might as well be from your mouth, you know?"

"I guess you're right."

"So, tell her whenever you're ready. Until then," Arthur held up two video game cases, "Which one, Smash Bros. or Mario Kart? I want to take advantage of this TV, and the Gamecube is just pleading me to play it."

Lewis smiled, eagerly grabbing Mario Kart from Arthur and popping it into the already setup console, "I'm going to wreck you on Rainbow Road."

Arthur grabbed the console as the screen flipped on, the plinking of the Gamecube logo filling the room with nostalgia, "You're on, Loverboy."


	6. Tired Hands

Chapter 6: Tired Hands

Vivi clicked off the phone, a smile lighting her face, "We got a job!"

Lewis looked up from his abuela's book, highlighter in hand. Even a week after his stunning realization, he was dazzled by the brightness of the girl in front of him. He struggled not to stutter, "What're we dealing with?"

"Well, there's a corn maze down by our old home town-you know the Shrocker family?-and they've actually been having quite a few problems with the haunted aspect of it."

Lewis cocked his head, "You mean to say their haunted corn maze is actually haunted?"

"Looks like. They keep finding dead bodies in the maze, so at first they thought it was just an opportunistic murderer, but...he says there have been other weird things. The corn maze itself has changed, and everytime him or the police try to tear through it, they end up back at the beginning of the maze with no luck." Vivi explained, glancing over her notebook as she read.

Arthur, driving the van up front, was not digging the job so far, "Whoopee, a potentially deadly chase through a corn maze in the dead of night. What better way to spend our Halloween?"

Vivi closed her book, "It pays well, a solid $2000."

This piqued Arthur's interest. Currently, they were allowed five dollars a day for meals each-if Vivi's math was correct, that would give them enough for gas money for the rest of the month without having to chip into the emergency funds. That meant Arthur's unhealthy reliance on junk food was cut short, and the caffeine junkie had next to no money to buy his energy drinks and coffee. A well paying job meant paradise for him.

Lewis leaned back, smiling to himself, "I could actually cook you guys a decent meal with that. I'm assuming half would go into the emergency fund?"

Vivi nodded, "Yep. Better safe than sorry."

"Well then, count me in."

The girl smiled, "You know I'm all for it. This mystery is too enticing."

Both looked up at Arthur, eyes pleading into the back of his fiery hair. He kept his head focused straight on the road, weighing the options carefully as his hands rocked gently back and forth. How could he chose between life and doritos? To Arthur, the world was too cruel.

"I better get a junk food stash the size of this van."

Vivi nearly jumped up in joy, "Alright! It'll be good to see home again. I miss all my old hangouts, and we absolutely have to go to the Pizza Palace for our Friday dinner, Arty. It's been way too long!"

Lewis looked somewhat sad, "I wonder how my family will react. They nearly disowned me when I left."

"Oh, suck it up, buttercup. My uncle Lance is going to kill me if I even show my face around there. He's all about being 'professional' and I skipped my two week notice," Arthur tenderly massaged the side of his neck, "when I wore jeans to work, he nearly strangled me. I worked at a mechanics shop for fuck's sake, what was I supposed to wear?"

Vivi giggled a little bit, "We'll hunt down the culprits, grab some pizza, and be out of there before he can even think of you, Arthur. Are we headed the right way?"

Arthur lifted a hand and gestured back to the two with a mix of disgust and duty, "You know it. Unwanted past, here I come." He groaned dramatically.

* * *

The night may be characterized by its darkness, but just as the morning sky can be many hues of light, the evening can be a thousand different shades of nothing. It was in the darkest of those shades, when the sky is both cloudy and starless, that the Mystery Skulls arrived at Shrocker Family Farms-a Halloween both deadly and terrifying.

Lewis stood outside of the maze, Vivi standing near his side, Mystery at his feet, and Arthur clinging to his arm with enough force to prevent blood circulation. Everytime the ginger joined them on a hunt, he naturally hid behind his large and intimidating bodyguard despite the fact that, with a gun, Vivi was possibly the safest. Checking all his bases, Arthur swung his flashlight around wildly, jumping at every simple noise he heard.

"Alright, the equipment is set up. Everyone have their gun handy?" Vivi asked, checking to make sure both of hers were safely concealed. Lewis gestured at his, but Arthur was still too terrified to really answer back. Vivi shrugged it off, knowing he'd probably be too frozen by fear and shock to use it anyway; she'd just have to keep a close eye on him. It was time to venture into possibly the most dangerous hunt they had taken yet, and none of them felt truly ready.

Lewis took a few steps into the maze, watching the stalks closely as the wind blew them back and forth. In the distance, he could hear the screams and laughter from the rival haunted house, part of him wishing they'd all stop so he could truly and utterly focus. Through the study of his abuela's notes, he had narrowed down their culprit to three things; a month long demon-summoning, haunted burial ground, or offended and cannibalistic fae-people. When brought up to Arthur, none of them had seemed that wonderful.

Lewis glanced at Vivi, her usually bright eyes now screwed up in concentration as she studied the scene. He hadn't told her yet-would this be the perfect time, surrounded by possibly death and/or terrible injury? It could be his last chance-unless, of course, they enter the afterlife together.

That was kind of sweet, but not something he wanted to do today.

Vivi tapped him on the shoulder, gesturing towards the choices they had in front of them: straight ahead, left, or right. He'd imagine, as they wanted to find the center, that straight would be the way to go in the end. Despite this, Vivi gestured to the right, and the whole gang followed. He loved how she did that.

Mystery was busy sniffing the ground viciously, and as they turned the corner, he rushed ahead, catching a whiff of something important enough to leave the group behind. As the gang weaved after him and in between the stalks, they nearly lost each other, but Vivi grabbed the two and pulled them along as she always did in the end. The strip of red from the dog's head reflected the light of Arthur's flashlight, and with that little beacon, they headed deeper and deeper into the maze.

Lewis glanced behind him, watching as the path they had come from was quickly enveloped by greedy corn stalks. The mud beneath their feet splashed up with every step, and as Mystery gained speed, so did they. He could feel a splash of fear grip his heart in a chokehold, but with every ounce of terror there was a gallon of adventure, and nothing was more exciting to him than the unknown.

He heard a distant chanting up ahead as Mystery slowed down a tad, growling underneath his breath and looking up at his owner's through his golden glasses. Arthur tightened his grip on both Vivi and Lewis, whispering and mumbling to himself as Vivi stole his flashlight and turned it off in what was to the ginger an act of betrayal, to Lewis an act that could save their lives. The corn was too thick to pass through now-they'd need to cut it down-but they could still peer into the heart of the corn maze if they pulled at the stalks hard enough.

"-and, with this sacrifice, our father shall rise again from the blood of the innocent. Awaken, unsightly virgin, and from your life let us be forgiven for the sins we may commit so that we may gaze upon the face of our ruler." A female voice cried out, her crowd rising in response with admiration and eagerness.

"Awaken, virgin."

Lewis closed his eyes. Looks like demon-summoning had been correct after all.

He caught a glimpse of a teenage boy bound in the middle of the clearing, shaggy brunette hair covering his eyes and a gushing wound still bleeding on his temple. At the words of the woman, his eyes opened slowly, and Lewis remembered him from high school: this was Eric Shrocker, the son of their client. He had been a freshmen when Lewis was a senior, so he would've been a sophomore now.

"H-hey, what's g-g-going on?" The boy, cursed with a stutter, trembled. It had never been that noticeable, but being surrounded by a demon cult never really helps those sort of things.

The sound of metal being pulled from a sheath of some sort rang throughout, and the boy began to struggle, "No, p-p-p-please don't...don't…"

Two young woman, each dressed in an old, brown cloak, leaned down to pick up the boy by the shoulders. One dipped down to whisper in his ear, "Cat got your tongue? How quaint." with a tone so sickly patronizing, it made Lewis flinch.

Something in this insult got to Vivi a little more than it had him. Lewis glanced over at her, finding his friend with shotgun in hand, aimed at the legs of the girl who had spoken so rudely. He could see from her clenched jaw that her teeth must have been pressed forcefully together, and with that, he knew she meant business.

Lewis adjusted his position a little to see further into the clearing, gesturing for Vivi to wait as the boy was thrown down dramatically onto his knees in front of what he assumed was the leader of the cult. The girl whom Vivi was aiming at pulled the shaggy head of Eric back, exposing a pale neck.

"Oh, unsightly virgin, your miserable life shall benefit the greater cause. No drop of blood shall be lost in vain, and you, along with those sacrificed prior, shall be seen as saints as a new world dawns," the cult leader lifted a finely gilded dagger, poised to strike, "Now, feed our father! With your death, bring us-"

A gunshot blasted through the night, and the clearing grew silent as the cult leader fell to her knees with her hands clutched to her side, crying out in pain as she dropped the knife into the mud. Without hesitation, Vivi rushed into the middle of the clearing and began cutting the ropes binding the boy in the middle, partaking in a plan she had formulated on the spot. The cult, along with Lewis and Arthur, was still dazed and confused.

Mystery burst out after her, his bunny tail sticking straight up and teeth bared as menacingly as a medium-sized dog could muster. As his thoughts caught up with him, Lewis followed after, and with him he dragged a whimpering Arthur. Though he loved the guy, he sometimes wondered why they brought the scaredy-cat along.

Vivi whispered quietly into Eric's ear, and the boy dashed away into the corn without looking back. She turned around, gun raised, to face the rest of the cult, "Don't move, or I'll shoot her again! And this time," Vivi glanced down at the leader, her hands still clenching her side, "it'll be fatal."

Each of the cult members raised their hands slowly to show defeat, faces hidden beneath the shadow of their hoods. Scattered throughout the clearing, incense was burned and black candles lit, and upon the ground was an intricate sigil dug deep into the mud-or was it mud? Lewis took a quick whiff of the air, and couldn't tell if the heavily metallic stench came from the bleeding cult leader or the possibly blood-stained ground beneath them.

He was brought back to reality by another gunshot and a firm hand on his arm that wasn't Arthur's. In fact, Arthur was pulled away from him with the sacrificial knife held close to his neck, eyes wide and voice raised in a bloodcurdling scream. At the foot of the cult, the leader was sprawled out in the silence that was death, and Vivi was thrown down next to her.

"You think we care for the life of one? Our vows are not to her, but to the father beneath," One cult member breathed, the one holding Arthur tightly, "You bring us another virgin to sacrifice. Still our father shall rise!"

Vivi's eyes grew wide, and she began scrambling in the mud to try and stand up while Arthur grew limp against the woman holding him, "Oh, dick move! In front of my friends, really?" he struggled a little, but gave up again, "How do you know I'm a virgin? For all you know I could be a total stud."

Lewis reached down for his gun, but it was taken quickly from his hands and pointed straight to his head, "Nice try, sugar-plum. Thanks for the new toy." taunted the same voice that had recently talked down the stuttering boy and thrown Vivi into a murderous rampage.

It was a pretty grim sight for the Mystery Skulls: Arthur was trapped by a knife, Lewis had a gun to his head, and Vivi couldn't move for fear that her friends would be slaughtered. The members turned to the one holding Arthur, chanting slowly and silently in sync. A thin line of blood had formed beneath the knife, and the ginger began to whine as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

"Arthur, no!" Vivi shouted out, bursting up and attempting to run towards him, but she was paused by the cocking of the hammer to Lewis' head. That was enough to stop her in her tracks.

But there was someone they had forgotten about.

Snarling rabidly, Mystery jumped into the air to grab the arm of Arthur's captor in his jaws, shaking viciously back and forth as he pierced her skin with sharp fangs. Despite his size, the dog could bite, and as he fell back to the ground the girl had a large chunk taken out of her shoulder. The dog spit it out, readying himself for another attack.

Lewis used this opportunity to duck beneath the gun pointed at his head and bowl his own keeper into the ground. He debated whether or not he should give the girl a few punches, but hated the thought of himself acting violently, and left her without his gun to run over and cradle the still stunned Arthur. Terrified ginger in his arms and brave bluenette with his hand, the team began blindly running through the corn stalks.

Mystery took the lead again, weaving in and out of the maze to lead them to the beginning once more. Arthur was convulsing violently, his eyes still rolled into the back of his head as the team hurried, the leaves of the corn slashing into their skin and blinding their eyes. Vivi was shouting back to Lewis, but the rustling of the wind in his ears was too much to hear past.

"Hang in there, Art. I'm getting you out of here."

Just as his legs began to fail him, Lewis fell rather than ran out of the maze. With Arthur out of the reaches of the cult, a scream was once more raised into the night before everything was silence. The only thing that ascended into the starless sky was the heavy breathing of the Mystery Skulls, and the light groaning of Arthur as his convulsions came to an end. His mouth was foaming slightly, but his eyes were now visible and clearly distressed.

"Vivi, I think he's having a seizure."

Vivi had also collapsed on the ground, throat dry and breathing laborious. Despite this, she nearly sprinted over to Lewis when Arthur's health was in danger, and began taking his pulse and checking other vitals.

The fear drained from her eyes as she gave a sigh of relief, pulling her hands from Arthur's neck to caress his cheeks and face tenderly, "He's over it now. Demon-related seizures don't last long, especially if the connection is cut," She stood up slowly, her legs wobbling slightly as she helped Lewis up, "but he'll be really sore, and also tired if I read correctly. The ambulance should be here by now-let's get him to the Shrocker's house."

They began walking slowly, Mystery panting behind them, "An ambulance? I knew you were psychic, Vi, but you never told me you could summon emergency vehicles at will."

She looked up at Lewis tiredly, "I told that boy to call them from the Shrocker's house, I'm sure he's gotten there by now. See, there they are."

Sure enough, red and white lights were flashing vividly up ahead of them with the promise of at least a good blanket or two and the proper treatment Arthur. Lewis looked down at his friend, lying limply in his arms as his chest rose and fell shallowly in sleep. Why had they brought him along in the first place? He never wanted to come investigate, and he always ended up the victim of some horrible fate.

Vivi must've been thinking of Arthur, too, as she grabbed his limp hand in hers. It had fallen from Lewis' protection and into hers without ever having to be alone. The three of them were terribly scratched, bruised, and overall battered, but with another near-death experience out of the way, Lewis felt extremely close to the ragtag group he now called family.

Did he want to ruin that?

Her hand still clenched Arthur's, her eyes staring straight ahead. She caught his glance out of the corner of her eye, turning to look up at Lewis with a reassuring smile, complete with closed eyes and raised cheeks. Should he risk that smile for the chance to call her, his?

Lewis smiled back as sincerely as he could. He wasn't willing to change what he had right now, even if it meant giving up the possibility of Vivi's love. It didn't matter how long he might have to wait, when the moment came, he'd tell her. Until then, he was perfectly okay with his little paradise.


	7. What She Needed

Chapter 7: What She Needed

The doctor pulled away from Arthur, a comforting smile upon her dark cheeks as she wrote down her diagnosis upon a yellow pad of paper, "Your friend will be fine now. All of his vitals are in check, and he isn't showing any signs of another attack coming on," she looked down at the yellow notepad, rolling her chair against the wall as she checked a few things off, "You said you're usually dependent upon caffeine, but haven't had it in quite some time, right?"

Arthur nodded, still somewhat dazed and disoriented but coming back fast.

"Then I'd call that the cause. Otherwise, your blood sugar is healthy and there's no sign of a fever. You and your friends are free to go whenever."

The team had hopped aboard an ambulance after reaching the Shrocker house, travelling alongside Eric and his very worried father for what seemed like an eternity of thank yous and gracious actions. Arthur had fallen asleep immediately, and though the paramedics were adamant about waking him up to make sure he was alright, check which side of his brain was down, etcetera, Lewis wouldn't let them. Both him and Vivi knew, from the wisdom of his deceased grandma, that possession seizures weren't fatal unless complete.

Lewis looked up at Vivi from his chair in the hospital room, much too big for the tiny piece of plastic and padding he was sitting upon, "Don't we need to pay? I'm pretty sure none of us have insurance."

"We're good. Arthur's still on his Mom's plan, the rest was easy enough to pay out of pocket," Vivi waved her wallet at Lewis, "and thus the emergency fund comes in handy. Who would've thought my senseless babbling and saving might actually be for something useful?"

"Alright, can we just get out of here then? I'm seriously sore, I feel like I just sprint twenty miles. Plus, I don't want my family to know I-"

Arthur was too late.

"Arthur Eugene Blecher!" a shrill voice cried out. There was a vigorous pounding down the hall, high heels clacking upon the hard floors as nurses jumped out of the way and wandering patients looked on in stunned silence. In a whirlwind of cheap perfume and pencil skirts, Arthur's dear Mom had entered the hospital room with the presence of an angry principal. The doctor, sensing impending doom, quietly slipped out unnoticed.

His mother was just as thin as her son, eyes brutal and calculating. Wverything about her screamed dominance, that she was the alpha female in any situation, and though her physique may have resembled her son's her personality was a far cry from it. Here was the stereotypical PTA mom who's overbearing and restrictive nature had led to a very awkward, very terrified child, but whose love was still present as she gripped Arthur in her arms tightly.

"Don't you dare do that again. Vivi," She looked up at the girl who had been like a daughter to this single mom, the stone eyes of the best brimming with fearful tears, "thank you so much for bringing my boy out of danger, just as you always do. He can never keep himself safe."

"Come on, she was the one who made me go in the maze anyway!"

Vivi smiled at the two, always finding the relationship between them comical at the least and charming in a few ways, "Thank you, , but it was Lewis who carried him out."

Lewis scratched the back of his neck nervously with a very uncomfortable smile directed at the mother of his best friend. Ms. Blecher had hated the football player-esque boy on sight, telling Arthur that he'd only get him into violence and drugs and gangs. When Lewis reflected upon it, part of that was correct, he guessed.

seemed to forget about all of this. Dragging her boy choking from the edge of the hospital bed, she gripped both Vivi and Lewis in a suffocating show of affection, her voice edged with sobs, "I could never have asked for better guardian angels for my boy. Bless you two children."

They were stuck in that awkward yet obligatory silence for quite some time before Lewis finally pulled away, his grin simple and sweet before fading into a frown of fear and a gasp of surprise. When he left the arms of , he was met by a sight even more tear-jerking, something he wasn't quite sure he wanted to see-or did he? How would they react?

Standing in the doorway, a very short and chubby hispanic woman gripped her two children next to her while a very tall, very buff husband shadowed her protectively with a toddler gripping his powerful hands. His wife couldn't have been taller than five-three while her husband was nearly seven feet tall, making the height difference a shocking but somewhat comical observation. Still, it nearly brought Lewis to tears.

"Oh mijo, cariño, my sun and stars and bright sky," the woman walked into the room slowly, lifting her hands to Lewis' face as though he were a phantom, "Why do you scare your mother so?"

"I...how did you know I was here, Mami?"

If Lewis had chosen to look at Vivi, he would've seen her smirking brightly at the newly reunited family. After telling her team that she was going to use the restroom, she found the Garza family's number in a phone book next to a payphone, calling them in the dead of night to tell them that their son was at the hospital and that, if they wished to see him, they better hurry fast. She had to admit, the way she had spoken over the phone probably made it seem like their son was dying, but what mattered was that the family he cared so much for was there to see him before he fled.

His mother didn't take her eyes off of her son, tears welling up in them as Lewis' father came up behind her, his hand placed comfortingly upon her back as he reached forward to grip his son on the shoulder. Behind him came the ragtag group of younger children, ranging from two years old to eight. The five year old, a stunningly beautiful child with shimmering black hair to her knees and almond eyes larger and brighter than the sun, came up to grip her brother by the hand with the biggest smile in the world.

"Lewey, you came back."

At this point, Lewis was seriously overwhelmed. All the fear he had that he wouldn't be accepted by his family began to melt away from the mountains of his mind, and he kneeled down next to the sister he had cradled in his arms as a babe, looking into her eyes as he grabbed her tiny hands in his gargantuan ones. Her smile widened.

"I never left, mi hermana pequeña."

"Mami told us you're a hero, you were on TV! You saved someone like Superman!" The eldest of the three, the eight year old boy, cried out in excitement and anticipation. From the footie pajamas he was sporting, complete with red cape upon blue shirt with large 'S' symbol, it wasn't too far to infer that the little boy might have a slight obsession with the one he compared his brother to.

Lewis went to deny that claim, but his parents were already enveloping him in their arms and reassuring him that they were so, so proud of him. This sort of tear-jerking family reunion was not exactly Arthur's favorite environment. Vivi glanced at her suffering friend, still being covered in his mother's compassion and kisses.

"It's technically Friday. How about Arty and I grab a really early breakfast and let you catch up with your family, Lew?" She grinned down at the curious eyes of Lewis' younger family, looking back up to see Arthur's relieved expression as he was able to push his Mom away just a little bit.

"Yeah, I'm sure Denny's has got to be open or something," he brushed off his now wrinkled vest, tutting at how it folded upon itself after that excursion, "and I'm really hungry, Mom. I'm sure I'd get healthier a lot quicker if I went and had breakfast at two in the morning with your favorite daughter, Vivi. Doesn't that sound just wonderful?"

was only halfway buying it, glowering at both Vivi and Arthur with suspicion, "I'm pretty sure you need to be sleeping right now, little man. If anything, some home cooking will do you a lot better, along with your old bed and a nice pair of PJs. I don't want to know how many nights you've slept in those clothes."

At the complaints of the mother, Vivi gestured with her eyes towards the still embracing family behind her, hoping that would understand that they needed a little alone time. The mother looked back at them, then again at Vivi, finally sighing in defeat.

"Okay, but so long as you promise you'll get him something at least a little healthy to eat. None of that greasy death food he used to bring into my house."

Vivi nodded as she grabbed Arthur and glanced back into the hospital, beaming with the brightness of the stars in the sky. From above the shoulder of his father, Lewis smiled at her with thankful eyes that were bordered with tears. She wondered if, maybe, the reason he had been so jittery and confusing over the past few days had to do with this, the missing of his family? She wouldn't know: she didn't have one, and the one she had was with her now.

What mattered was that they were with him now, and that Vivi had helped them find each other again. She knew, deep down, that what she had done was a very, very good thing.

* * *

" , this really isn't necessary." Vivi smiled, eyes wide and greedy as the table in front of her was set with a feast, "offering me room to stay was kind enough, but inviting me to your table is just too much."

The stout woman waved off the politeness of the girl at her table, placing plates and folding napkins expertly and efficiently from years working at a restaurant, "Nonsense, you are our guest. Lewis talked so much about you, I must come to know this beautiful woman he has been travelling with."

Vivi grew red at such words, "Thank you, Mrs."

"Do not call me Mrs! In our house, you call me Mirabel. Excuse the silence of my husband, he does not know much English. We only moved here when Lewis was a young boy, and while I had to learn in order to man the shop, he only needed to know how to cook," She smiled, placing her hand on her husband's shoulder for him to grab tenderly with a mustached smile, "He very much likes you. He sees that you make our boy happy."

"You said Lewis was a boy when you moved here; does that mean he was born outside of the U.S.?" Vivi tried to divert the conversation, beginning to feel somewhat uncomfortable at the praise she was receiving.

"I was born in Nuevo León, in Mexico. The city of Guadalupe, right?" Lewis butted in, entering the dining room from the kitchen with a steaming plate of chicken and vegetables balanced on the palm of his hand. His two eldest siblings, a fifteen year old boy and a girl of fourteen, came rushing in behind him with the rest of the food in their own.

"Yes, Guadalupe. Our relatives made a new life for themselves here with a business they began, making beautiful traditional jewelry while still selling it fairly. My husband was always a wonderful cook, with so many family recipes and secrets-he had a gift, but he was never able to reap it in Nuevo León," The family began to sit down, "In America, we were able to live comfortably while still living joyfully. It is all we asked for."

At this time, the family bowed their heads respectfully in what Vivi assumed was prayer. The father, so silently that Vivi had to strain to hear, began to recite what she could only assume was a Spanish form of grace, eyes closed and hands folded as his words swirled around the food. As he finished, quickly yet with slight hesitation, the large family burst once again into life as though nothing had paused them in the first place.

"So why weren't you there to greet me so early this morning, Amado and Marisol? I felt so unloved without you two there…" Lewis teased, drawing a fake tear down his cheek and pouting dramatically.

"The school hosted an overnight event for the choir, which they are both a part of, of course. I didn't have time to pick them up!" His mother replied, ruffling the hair of the older boy. He tried to act cool about it, but was smiling just as wide as any of the family.

"What about the other boy, the one that Lewis saved? Is he not coming to see us, Mami?" the girl, Marisol, asked. Maribel glanced at Vivi for an answer.

"He was feeling really sore after what happened last night, he went to sleep at about four this morning and hasn't been awake since. All Arthur needs is a little rest at home is all, I'm sure he'll come around to say hello." She lied. In all actuality, Arthur was probably playing video games in the Mystery Skulls van outside his mother's house, but this sort of social interaction wasn't exactly his forte.

Vivi began piling food onto her plate, choosing carefully and somewhat less than she would usually eat, but as the family continued to stack their towers of food higher and higher she felt a little more comfortable. Lewis pointed out the dishes that were really spicy, the ones that weren't very, and so on-she could take a little bit of heat, but in no way was Vivi as tolerant of it as his family was.

"I made almost all of this myself, you know. In a way, this is the first meal I've cooked for you, V." Lewis grinned thoughtfully, edging a glass of milk towards her with the knowledge that she'd need it eventually, "It didn't really cross my mind when I was cooking it, but here we are."

He always talked of his family cooking, taking pride in his own as well. With a knife and a frying pan, Lewis was a god, and had planned on taking over his father's place or at least helping in the kitchen when he got a little older, maybe as a side job for college. Everytime he watched Vivi and Arthur eat junk food, he gagged, complaining about the lack of a stove and proper kitchenware with the promise that, sooner or later, he would cook a magnificent meal for his team.

And here it was, alongside a chattering family and a couple of smiles too big for this world.

Halfway through her first bite, Vivi was gulping down the milk with tears in her eyes while the family laughed cheerily at her first bite of authentic Mexican food, but something about their playfulness made it less of an insult and more of a tease. She felt more than a little ready to tough out the rest of the meal, knowing that the surrounding family-and especially Lewis-had cooked just for her. It was the spiciest food she had ever tasted, but also some of the most delicious, and the people around her were more than social: they were compassionate, loving, and loyal.

Vivi had never had a family like this.

Until she met Arthur, dinners had been a lonely thing. Even when she adopted him into her life, they only ate together once a week with the exception of a few meals with his mother or uncle Lance. This family, within this house of welcomes and brightness, was much different from anything she had ever experienced before: whereas the other social dinners had been thick with polite conversation and mostly silent eating, the Garza's acted as though Vivi were just another child of theirs, another mouth for feeding and talking and snoring. Under this roof, Vivi had more than just her friends and a dog-she was exposed to a loving family.

She sometimes caught Lewis' father staring at her critically, but he always smiled when she noticed his gaze. Even if he didn't talk much and, when he did, she couldn't understand it very well, she wasn't scared of the large man-just like Lewis, he looked less to her like a bodybuilder and more like a teddy bear.

When dinner ended and the table began to disperse into separate tasks, Vivi watched Lewis' father pull him aside with a very serious gleam in his eyes. Both hands gripping the shoulders of his boy, he relayed a message that she couldn't hear from across the room, gave her a wink, and left Lewis blushing very, very brightly.

Vivi joined her teddy bear with the dishes, leaning in close to him in an attempt to get him to spill the beans, "What was that about? You look like a tomato."

Lewis stopped scrubbing his plate as she asked, trying not to look at the girl as she leaned over to get a better look at his face, "He, uh, misunderstood our relationship is all. Nothing to think about, you don't have to worry, nope." He was trying to sound calm, but his tense muscles and overall scared nature denoted something else.

She bit her lip to stop any laughter in its tracks, "What kind of misunderstanding, Lulu?"

He resumed scrubbing his plate vigorously and without mercy, "Oh, you know, he just gave me...gave me permission to marry you is all, no big deal. Just a little bit of a misunderstanding between us, no biggie."

Vivi couldn't hold back her laughter now, "I think I've fallen in love with your family, Lewis. Can I marry them instead?"

That reassured him a little bit, and his scrubbing went back to normal speed, "Really? I was afraid that they were coming off a little strong. We're always so noisy, it never really occurred to them that they might be a bit overwhelming. I was so scared that you'd think they were, I don't know, weird?" he was clearly touched by her words of acceptance towards his family, "I don't know, it just means a lot to me. And they really like you, as you can probably infer by my father's attempt at arranging a marriage between us."

Just then, a hand reached up to tug at the skirt of Vivi, a pair of very worried almond eyes looking up with determination but a little bit of fear as they asked a question of life and death, "Vivi, could you read me a book?" the second youngest Garza mumbled, her hand covering her mouth as she searched for an answer. Lewis squatted down to look at her square in the eyes.

"Vivi's probably very tires, Perla. I'll come down to read to you if you can wait just a little bit longer."

"No, it's fine," Vivi grinned, heart melting at the adorableness of the shy girl in front of them, "I'd love to read to you, Perla."

That beautiful smile poked out from the cheeks of the tiny girl, and she offered a hand for Vivi to take lightly in hers. They both looked back at Lewis' face, brimming with a happiness neither truly understood, before running through the hallways and into the room of the young girl, her older sister, and the spare bed for Vivi. After curling up in a thick comforter and reading _Where The Wild Things Are_ at least ten times, the two fell asleep on top of each other, leaving the spare bed empty and Vivi's heart filled with a form of love she had never known she needed.

For Lewis, falling asleep in his old bed with the oldest of his three brothers, the love Vivi showed his family and what she received in return was not only a relief, but a call to action. So quickly, she had become another part of the family, and be it his parent's eagerness for the boy to have a friend or their overall accepting nature Vivi was no longer a stranger to the house but an addition to.

Before they came back to their hometown, Lewis swore that he would ask Vivi to be his, to truly be a part of his family. As his father had told him, struggling to relay his words in broken English with an accent so thick yet sincere that Lewis just had to listen, Vivi 'was a keeper', and he needed to keep her close.


	8. Glass Heart

Chapter 8: Glass Heart

Vivi burst forward from her bed, frantically grabbing her bedsheets in a flurry of gasping breaths as she cried out Arthur's name. Her eyes flicked about the room in heightened awareness in search for danger, but as she found none, she released her grip and relaxed her posture as best as she could. The night around her was silent, as though a bedsheet had been thrown over the sleeping children of the motel, and nothing stirred save her and the dog. She sighed tiredly: for the first time in a long time, the girl had dreamed, and for the first time ever, she had witnessed before her the most realistic nightmare, the most vivid horror that her eyes could ever handle. Even as Mystery nosed his way into her arms, she was shaking violently.

He would never, would he?

She swung her feet over the side of the bed, dressed only in a tank top and boxers, shivering as she did so. It wasn't that cold outside, but right now she was freezing. Everything she had seen...how could it feel so real? Dangling over the edge, feeling metal against her neck, the hopelessness of suffocation and death; that couldn't have just been a terror of the night.

Especially when it was Arthur.

She looked around for something to keep her warm. All of the clothes and toiletries of the Mystery Skulls was kept in her mostly empty room, filling a small corner with duffel bags. A year after the fondly dubbed Corn Maze Massacres, the Mystery Skulls had gotten quite a bit of business-even now, they had three jobs queued up-and so they were able to rent a bit of a nicer, more commendable motel. Vivi's first priority had been a hot shower and a good heater, but Lewis and Arthur had agreed on checking safety over anything: if they were going to continue letting Vivi sleep alone, she would need that extra bit of protection so that they could all sleep easier, if a bit cold.

Right now, she really wished they didn't let her sleep alone.

She began rummaging through the piles of clothes, hers and Arthur's and Lewis' all mixed together spanning three bags. All she needed was something warm, her sweater would be nice, maybe a long sleeve shirt...it didn't matter, so long as she felt coddled.

The girl rose with her prize, a gigantic, pinkish-purple sweater made of what felt like alpaca wool. As she rubbed the fabric between her fingers, she could feel the warmness emanating off of it like a campfire. This would work.

When she pulled it on, the scent of spices and cooking hit her nose, mingled slightly with a touch of cologne. In the darkness, she couldn't see the color, but when she lifted it to cover her head it was more than clear that it wasn't hers at all. Reaching clear down to her knees and making the chubby girl look like a toddler, it was plain to see that this was Lewis' sweater.

For some reason, that made her want to wear it even more.

Warmer now, Vivi went to go lay back down in her bed, but something stopped her before she could reach it. The sheets looked hostile and unwelcoming while the bed itself was made of stone, the comforter less of a comfort and more of an insult. She couldn't go back to that, and even is she did, sleep wouldn't claim her while her heart was racing like it was.

Vivi paced the room angrily, trying to warm her freezing feet as they padded quickly back and forth with uncertain purpose. They had a job tomorrow, and she needed to be alert for a possible werewolf hunt! At this rate, she'd fall asleep while speaking to the client. Frustrated, she lifted the sweater to cover her face with a silent scream, and was once again met by the warmth and comfort of Lewis.

That gave her an idea.

She grabbed the key to both her and the boys' room, opening the door with Mystery hot on her heels. Uncertainly, she unlocked the door to their sleeping quarters, poking her head in cautiously while the dog rushed in, hurrying over the the foot of Arthur's bed. It was darker than her room without the streetlights outside the window, but she felt ten times calmer within.

The sounds of sleeping whirled around the room like a spell, noises that she had memorized as a song of comfort and company. Both snored softly from their separate beds, stuck in a rest like death. She had to wonder, as she always did, what dreams her boys had? It didn't matter, but to her, she felt she must know what gave them such a peaceful and happy expression, such a wonderfully relaxed night. Breathing shallow, she approached Lewis carefully.

Now she had grown uncertain. Part of her didn't want to wake him up from such a beautiful silence, but she needed him right now. A tuft of his purple hair, un-gelled and straying from his pompadour, covered his nose and quivered lightly as he snored a soft lullaby. Her heart warmed, and though she felt it rude, Vivi lifted her hand to his shoulder and gave him the lightest of shakes.

Those gorgeous pink eyes fluttered open with the tenderness of butterflies, kissing his cheeks with gentle wings. They looked up at her with at first unrivalled joy and affection, but soon were replaced with fear and protective curiosity. Lewis sat up, gripping Vivi's shoulders and looking behind her and out the motel room door.

"Is everything okay, V? Did someone try to come into your room?" He asked, looking just about ready to beat up the first thing that came into his line of sight, "I hate putting you alone in motel rooms, but I'm glad we chose this one over the cheaper rooms down the street; they may have gotten in otherwise. Are you okay?"

She looked down shyly at her feet, grabbing her arm in one hand as she replied back, still shaking from her vision, "I had a nightmare. Could you...could you hold me until I fall asleep?" she whispered, her voice so quiet it could've been a breath of wind through the sleeping town.

Lewis' eyes softened at that simple question, looking at her with warm eyes and releasing her shoulders a little bit. He stood up, and she saw in the younger boy the big brother he had spent his whole life being. How many times had Lewis been woken up to scare away the monsters in his baby sisters' closet, or to be the night light and blanket they needed when it grew dark?

They left Mystery with Arthur, entering Vivi's room and locking both locks just to be safe. She pulled down the sweater to cover her boxers completely, realizing she was still wearing his clothes. As Lewis got into the queen size bed and opened the sheets for her to join him, she stopped to apologize.

"I...is it okay if I wear this, just for tonight?"

He glanced at the sweater, smiling tiredly as he recognized it to be his own, "Of course."

By the looks of it, Lewis was still too asleep to fully understand what was happening. He wrapped her in his arms, blanket and all, falling back to sleep almost immediately with his lips pressed gently to her forehead in an unfinished kiss. She wondered if he even knew it was Vivi, or if he had been transported back home to Perla and Marisol. As she pressed her head into his chest and pulled her arms and legs up to curl into a ball, Vivi didn't really care: the bed was warmer, the night brighter, and she was feeling tired again.

Something hit her forehead from around the neck of her giant teddy bear, suspended in front of her eyes with the glistening of glass and the outline of a heart. She reached forward, grabbing the locket in both hands as though it were paper thin. With a light click, it sprung open to reveal a poorly cut photo resting between the two halves. Her smile spread from cheek to cheek, wide and open with her hands grasping Lewis'. His eye was closed in a wink, but the other was open to stare at her adoringly with his fingers cupping her face, a picture taken just a few days ago at a photobooth in a mall.

Never had Vivi smiled as big as she smiled just then, knowing that he held her so close to him, just above his exposed heart within the glass locket. She had expected his family to be smiling from within, but what met her eyes felt so very special knowing that, out of all his loved ones, Lewis chose her.

She could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest, a rabbit spooked by the prospect of such closeness. Her thoughts sprinted back to Arthur, asleep and alone in his own bed, and she wondered why she hadn't gone to her best friend of eleven years for comfort. As the past few months had unfolded, Arthur had expressed that he was feeling left out in many different ways, and her mind stretched to an accusation he had shouted at her in a flurry of frustration and lost hope.

"He's replacing me. You're letting Lewis replace me."

Vivi smiled now, looking up at the lightly sleeping Lewis. Arthur had been wrong, Lewis could never in a million years replace him. To her, Lewis had filled a spot in her heart that Arthur had never even been a candidate for, a place she felt he would never see. While Arthur was her best friend for so many years and someone she held and revered as a savior of sorts, Lewis was the keeper of the heart she had so often sought to give away.

She closed her eyes for good, beaming like a child. If she could stay like this for the rest of her life, Vivi would've given up anything. Cradled in the arms of the one who held her heart so gently, she wished and prayed and hoped that someday she might be able to hold his between her open palms.

* * *

Arthur had been a lonely child. This we know as all the Mystery skulls had been lonely, but Arthur in particular had no one before Vivi. If you could accumulate negative friends, he could have made an army of those he lacked. Instead, they made an army against him.

He had been bullied, beat up, teased, made fun of. Every black eye and every bruise was more than just an imperfection upon the skin, it was a dent in his fragile soul, a nick in the glass of his true self. Vivi had kissed his imperfections into beautiful art, brought out his strong points and tried to crush those haunting weaknesses that kept him awake every night, but there was something she could never quite shake off of him, the most important part of his soul that everyone but her could see.

Arthur was still lonely.

Two people had penetrated the ice that surrounded him, one of the most obnoxious pink and the other of a brilliant blue, but he could feel himself falling away from them with every passing day. Lewis had told him that he loved Vivi, and after eleven years with her, even the socially inept Arthur could tell that she felt the same. As they grew closer together, the only two he truly loved left him behind to watch in pain. What a horrible way to find that you are not needed.

It began with the increasing amount of jobs they received. Arthur only partook in half of them, staying behind to watch the car and play video games when they didn't need him. At first, this was fine with him, but every time the two came back with stories to tell and hauntings to discuss, Arthur was forced to keep his mouth shut and his eyes on the road. He knew nothing of the supernatural, and even less of how to keep friends.

When they weren't talking of jobs, it was even worse. Lewis had recently gotten his hands on a box filled with books that his grandma left for him, all annotated and filled with what to him was the most interesting side notes, what was to Arthur the ramblings of a crazy old lady. Each book they read together, each new fact they fell upon, the further Arthur fell behind.

Even at night, Arthur was no longer included in the group while sleeping. When he was younger, he always joked around about how clingy Vivi had become and how weird her snuggling with anything and everything was. At sleepovers, she would fall asleep on the floor of Arthur's bedroom, always waking up to find herself in his bed. In the van, even, she'd curl up in her blanket only to rise with the two boys-plus dog-wrapped in her arms. At first, such closeness made Arthur uncomfortable, but as she slowly began to leave his side of the blankets untouched, he wished he had never teased her or said anything at all. Maybe then she would've called on Arthur to comfort her last night instead of leaving him to wake up alone.

When they left the Saturday after their thrilling werewolf hunt, Leis drove with Vivi and Mystery in the front with him, assuming Arthur would just fall asleep like he usually did. This time, though, he stayed awake as best he could. There was a hope within him that Vivi, the one he placed all his trust in, would remember that which she had so clearly forgotten.

Lewis peered over at the book in her hands, "Which one is that?"

She didn't even lift her eyes she was so immersed in the text, pupils flashing quickly back and forth as she wrote notes down in her notepad, "The one filled with curses, rituals, and spells. This one here is about ghost solidification, I thought we might need it some day."

He looked back at the road, "High-control ghosts have solid forms, though. The only ones we could use that on are low-control, and why would we want them to have a physical form to wreak havoc with?"

Vivi shook her head, smiling wide as she flipped back in her notebook, "Well, you see, we may have been wrong with our assumption of a ghost's life cycle. In one of your grandma's books, she explained that instead of beginning as a low-control ghost then gaining control as time goes by, they instead follow an arc, see," she gestured towards a very detailed graph, "to put it simply, they begin with little to no control, but then they gain a large amount through their first few years. Different ghosts gain different amounts of control over different periods of time, but once they reach their personal likit, they lose it all."

Lewis exhaled in excitement, "So that's why some of the older haunts are the craziest?"

She bobbed her head in response, "Same goes for the new ones. They both have the same control over their energy, or lack thereof."

Arthur pulled out his 3DS, but the battery wasn't charged and he was out of luck. Had she really forgotten their Friday meal after so many years? Lewis and Vivi were still jabbering on about the same thing they always talked about, and Arthur couldn't sleep with all this anxiety filling his veins.

He leaned his head on the back of the chair up front, where Mystery was sitting. Vivi had scooted over to the seat closest to Lewis, showing him the pictures and diagrams as the boy's eyes flicked back and forth between the road and her notes. In most cases, Arthur would scold him for looking away, but he really had no energy whatsoever.

Neither of them needed him now that they had each other. Vivi knew well enough how to take care of the van, and even if right now he hated him, Arthur trusted Lewis to take care of her and prevent the girl from going too far in the name of her supernatural passion. Even Mystery did more for the team than he did! This wasn't the life Arthur wanted, and in that instant, he knew that he should probably move on.

Uncle Lance had called him yesterday, restating his offer. If Arthur came back home, he would inherit his uncle's baby, the Kingsmen Mechanics shop. With that shop, he could make more than a comfortable living: the Blecher family had a gift with metal, and were known around the state for good and honest work. Maybe Arthur could settle down with a few projects, make his mother happy, get off the road. Vivi and Lewis wouldn't even notice he was gone.

He looked away, disheartened by his own thoughts. As he began observing the trees flashing by their window, he could hear in Vivi's voice the smile she shared with Lewis, watching as Mystery joined along with a grin of his own from the corner of his eye.

How nice, a big happy family of smiling idiots. Arthur felt like he had to puke.

As Lewis looked down at Vivi, the girl saw something outside that caught her attention, "Oh, Lewis, we just have to stop and check that out! Did you see how spooky that cave looked? It was just calling out our names."

Arthur swung around to look out the opposite window as they flashed by an eerie black cave seeping some sort of green gas, "I don't think that's a good idea. It even has a sign with a skull and crossbones, Vivi, that's never a good sign."

Lewis nodded, "We have another job to get to, and it looked pretty, I don't know, deadly?" Arthur could feel Vivi's frown from the backseat, "We're here to solve mysteries, not get ourselves killed."

"Oh, come on, where's the fun in sticking to the schedule? We got two days to travel two hours, and we've faced things a lot scarier than a big cave. Please, Lulu?"

That nickname was his weakness, and Lewis slowed down to pull a very jerky U-turn, "Alright, but the moment it gets too weird, we're turning right around and running. I don't want to be caught in a situation I can't carry Arthur out of." he teased, glancing back at the ginger as the car came to a stop.

"Oh no. I'm not going in there, I have a worse feeling about this cave than anything ever, and that's saying something."

Lewis hopped out of the car, opening the back to let Arthur out as he offered a hand to his best friend, "Come on, Art. I'm sure everything will be just fine."


	9. This Silence

Chapter 9: This Silence

"Guys, I can't do this," Arthur whimpered, gripping onto Lewis' shoulder with as much power as a bent daisy as they headed towards the cave, taking the same defensive position he always did before being dragged into trouble, "I mean, skull and crossbones aside, the cave has eyes. Angry eyes. And big, menacing teeth-this could be, like, a giant titan and we're just walking right into its stomach. I can't die like this."

Lewi smiled back at him, attempting reassurance with a toothy grin, "We haven't died yet, Arthur, and Vivi's probably right. It's just a cave when you get right down to it, and the only thing to fear in a cave is darkness," Lewis lifted up his torch, waving it gently as a beacon to his scared friend, "Most animals are terrified of fire, anyway, so nothing will jump out at us. And if it gets to be too much for me or Vivi, I promise you we'll be out in a flash."

When Arthur still wouldn't budge, Lewi glanced at Vivi for help. She hadn't yet taken her eyes off of the cave, wonderstruck by everything surrounding her: the curling thorns, the shape of the cave overall, the green gas that flowed steadily from the cave before dispersing around her. As always in the face of mystery and danger, Vivi held a daring smile. When no one spoke, she looked at her friends confusedly, but realized almost immediately the situation. Vivi turned to Arthur with a smile, shivering behind his giant protector uncertainly.

"Arty, nothing in here strikes me as dangerous, and when had my intuition been wrong? We'll be fine, in and out in a flash. Nothing can hurt us when we're together, remember?"

Arthur didn't say anything, only nodded halfheartedly as he felt his fail. Before they reached any danger, he felt he'd probably end up dying from a heart attack or something-this wasn't how he wanted to spend his Saturday at all, and this wasn't where he wanted to be at anytime. Hands still gripping Lewis tightly, the boy in purple began to lead the group into the darkness, lit only by a flickering torch.

Mystery hugged Arthur's heels as they entered the cave, guarding the boy as if he knew something the others didn't. While Vivi chattered away at the interesting formation of the inside of the cave and Lewis lead in focused silence, the dog watched everything at once with complete awareness and contempt. Something in the low growling and big frown of the usually curious dog led Arthur, the only one who could see him in the back of the procession, to believe something was going on outside of Vivi's near-psychic abilities.

"Oh, my god. Those are definitely bats, Lewis. Bats are never a good sign, have you not seen the horror movies? We're probably walking straight into Dracula's lair. In no way is this a good situation, not at all." Arthur babbled, looking up towards the ceiling. He swore the one that stared back at him had glowing eyes of the same green as the cave. Possibly radioactive bats? Count this redheaded coward out.

Vivi giggled a little bit at her friends observation, quiet as she continued on, "They're a natural part of the ecosystem, Arty. None of Washington's bats eat anything but bugs, and they really aren't that active unless you wake them up." Vivi looked back at the cave ahead, quickening her pace as she hurried along with a finger pointing into the distance, "Oh, look Lewis! It breaks off into two different caves!"

The cave had been growing smaller, little by little. Up ahead, it split off into two smaller caves, one of which wasn't much bigger than Vivi herself. Each road was labelled with two very helpful signs sporting three question marks and no further explanation as to the contents of the paths or what was down either. Wooden steps, surprisingly new for such an old looking cave, had appeared gradually beneath their feet, leading them onwards into what looked like a possible light source in either direction.

Arthur was still not that thrilled, "Lewis, are those skulls? Lewis those are definitely skulls. We need to get out of here, those look a lot like human skulls. Come on, this isn't too simple! People died here. Let's turn around and forget about this place, go grab some lunch, maybe go swim in a cheap motel pool or something I mean, swimming is a lot more fun than dying, right?" he rambled on, his voice starting strong with terror before ending in a whimper tapering into nothing.

Lewis actually seemed to be listening this time, looking at Vivi with worry lighting his shaded eyes, "V, he might be right. Those skulls look pretty human, also pretty dead."

She shook her head, pointing towards the smaller of the two paths without even considering ditching this new adventure, "No can do, we're already this far, we better see it through. Mystery and I'll take this path-it's too small for you anyway, Lewis. Go up the alternate route, and we'll meet up again in…" She looked down at her phone as she pulled it from her pocket, squinting through the fog, "thirty minutes. Sound good?"

"Nope. Doesn't sound good at all." Arthur whined as Lewis pulled away from his grasp and towards the opposite entrance.

"Sure, sounds like a plan," He reached out a hand for Arthur, preparing to pull the boy along himself, "come on, Art, I'll protect you. It's just a cave, and if it goes up enough we'll probably end up outside again. What do you say, buddy?"

Arthur glared at him, shooting daggers through his amber eyes, "If I didn't need you right now, I'd probably punch you in the dick. No, I'd definitely punch you in the dick, no doubt in my mind."

Lewis smiled as his older friend grabbed onto him again, and the two left Vivi and Mystery to ascend into the unknown of the cave. Vivi descended, thinking that her dog was close behind when in all actuality, Mystery, who had been eyeing Arthur for quite some time now, had hurried after the boys with the same disturbed look on his face.

Vivi's tunnel opened up onto an eerily familiar looking clearing, the ground covered in stalagmites and green fog. She could barely see through the thickness of the gas surrounding her, and hoped that it wasn't toxic in any way. The formations that grew from the ground seemed very sharp, like medieval fortifications, and even when she kicked a thin one they were too strong to break. In the back of her mind, she told herself not to fall forward: It would hurt.

She glanced up at the cliff jutting from the side of the clearing, catching a little movement out of the corner of her eye. Purple-pink hair jutting over the edge, Lewis was peering over the cliff, looking directly at her as he spoke something to Arthur, waiting far behind him. She was unsure if he actually saw her, or was just looking at the base of the cliff with the fog so terribly thick.

"Hey, Art, look at how far up we are, you can see this big clearing below." Lewis observed, pointing down into what to Arthur was just more fog, "I think I saw Vivi down there, this must be where her tunnel ended, too. There's another cave up ahead, it wouldn't surprise me if she went up ahead without us, but this is as far as we can go. Come take a look."

Arthur hated heights, and he was feeling just a little bit sick from the thought of being so high without anything to protect him or Lewis, "I know I sound like a broken record, but let's head back, Lewis. We can't go any further, anyway, and my arm is burning really bad."

Lewis didn't even look back, still immersed totally in the sight ahead of him, something beautiful in a horrific way, nearly tragic, "It's probably nothing, Art, just a cramp. Yeah, that's definitely Vivi down there, and either that shadow next to her is a very short stalagmite or Mystery. I hope she'll wait for us." Lewis continued on, but Arthur was only half listening now.

He scratched his arm quickly, looking at Lewis but not quite hearing him as he rattled on. Something was sneaking its way into his head, little whispers that Arthur couldn't quite push away no matter how hard he tried.

_He makes you seem worthless._

_Without him, Vivi would still count on you._

_You're better than him, Arthur._

_Don't let him make a fool of you._

Part of his face was growing numb, as though al connections to it had been cut off. He tried to look over to his left to see what was happening to his arm, but couldn't move his neck of face to catch a glimpse. Everything having to do with the left side of his body was no longer within his control, and as his mind fought off the whispers in his brain, he felt his body bow down to the force within him.

_No, he;s my friend...Vivi still cares for me, she just needs someone who can indulge her love for ghosts is all, someone who can love her the way Lewis does. I can't do that! I'm just her friend!_

_She doesn't need you when he's around. If something were to happen to him, something very terrible…_

Arthur watched as his left arm was lifted up, his skin turned green by what he could only assume was the gas, or whatever hid within it. He opened his mouth to scream out, feeling his heart racing in panic for his friend, but was cut off once again by the voice in his head taking over, his words never making it to his tongue.

_You would be her favorite, Arthur. Her only._

"Lewis!" Arthur finally was able to cry out, his voice echoing through the cave as his body was thrust forward into a run. Nothing Arthur did could slow him down, nothing could stop the run he had broken into, and nothing could stop the cry of pain that left his body as he realized what was happening.

Everything Arthur had ever read or watched or played depicted these moments of adrenaline as excruciatingly slow, as though someone had hit the pause button to watch each and every frame take place, every detail unfold, but to Arthur, it all happened painfully fast. Lewis turned around, smile phasing to confusion and then fear as he realized what his best friend was doing; he heard below the shout of Vivi, calling out the name of the one she had only recently come to love, completely and purely; he felt his own eyes fill with tears as he couldn't control himself, couldn't save his friend, couldn't even say he was sorry. This happened in a split second, no dramatic music to name it tragic, no time to fully register the pain. Arthur knew that what happened in this second was absolute, and all he could do was close his eyes.

When Lewis had turned around, he had only seen a flash of orange. He was falling now, falling and reaching and screaming as his torch was flung from his hand, trying and failing to grab the ledge as it fell out from beneath his feet. He looked to the side, watching in horror as Vivi tried to run for him, throwing her arms out as though she were going to catch him, her eyes pouring tears as though she were a heavy raincloud. In that instant, Lewis felt two emotions fill his body with a passion he had never felt, something extremely large, two-sided, and terrifying.

He was filled with the purest form of hatred, icy and chilling as it sent thin fingers of frost to freeze his glass heart into ice, Arthur's face cradled between the feelings of betrayal and the pain that comes with not only the loss of a friend, but the loss of faith in them. On the other hand, he was filled with the most burning sense of love as his eyes met with Vivi's, and in the clearness of his chilled heart, he was filled with an orange passion, the flames of affection turning the shell of anger into something alive, something beating.

His last thoughts were of Vivi, and with them, he prayed to whatever god that might listen that she would not remember any of this, that she would wake up the next morning without a clue as to who he was.

She didn't deserve his death.

Still her voice cried into the depths of the caverns, and still he fell. Part of him grew to accept his fate, the fate of a dead man, but the majority of his emotions pointed towards feeling incomplete. In other words, the young Lewis was not prepared to move on. He didn't plan on leaving this realm without some form of revenge.

He refused to leave without her knowing how he truly felt.

And just as soon as he fell, Vivi watched the boy she loved fall onto a stalagmite, his lifeblood pouring through his chest and mouth in a flood of gushing warmth with his arms thrown back as though he had angel wings. If he did, they wouldn't be here right now. If he could fly, why would there be so many tears in her eyes?

The world around her was quiet, but this time, the silence wasn't the comforting blanket of night she so loved and adored. This silence was that of death and despair, the inability to speak grasping the lungs of those who have forgotten how, preventing their cries be heard so that they may suffer alone. This is the silence of loss, and of reaching for the one who you so recently held to your breast in love. This is the silence of a broken heart which is not heard as it falls to the floor and shatters into a million pieces that can never be placed back together, no matter how much glue is dumped upon it or how many kisses a loved one bestows to heal it. Vivi had stopped running now, falling to her knees beside the large stalagmite in front of her as though she were praying to the lost. Her head bowed, shoulders slumped, cries echoing as though a choir mourned.

She heard in her ear the whispers of the one lost, a promise she could never remember before her sobs were muted. This is the silence of Lewis' last wish, of his soul bursting from the shell of his body to grip with both hands the eyes of the beholder, the gateway of her soul and mind, to force his life from her memory, to leave her with nothing but her name before freeing himself into the night, into the unknown. This is the final gasp of a fallen lover.

Up above, Arthur was still fighting in vain, his left side battling his right in an attempt to gain total control, but he was weak. Riddled with self-doubt and hatred, his conscious was faltering to the confidence of possession, the unwavering loyalty to oneself that come with pure evil. The part of him that wasn't possessed was trying its hardest to stumble towards the cliff, hoping with some false courage that somehow he would fall off of it himself to meet a fate beside Lewis. Everything was burning to him, and the only escape he saw was the cool clutches of death and decay.

His mind was gone now, all he could feel was the greenness that overtook him. Something was growling wildly, something with red eyes and sharp teeth staring at him with distrust and anger, but his vision was cut off by the spreading veil across his head. He wanted to faint, to be done, but what if this monster found Vivi?

Just then, he felt the pressure bound away from his mind, the whispers screaming into silence as they were ripped from their anchor and forced back into the fog as he gained his control back. His face synchronized with the tearful frown of his right, his legs all his own to use and walk away from the cliff with, his arm…

As his shoulder was once again in his field of control, Arthur cried out in the most bloodcurdling scream of pain, gripping the bone where his arm had been. Those flashing red eyes gripped his arm between their jaws, aggressively and ferally crying at him while its six tales whipped around angrily, saving his life with the pain of a lost arm. Even when he couldn't hear himself, when the world was synchronized into one long note, Arthur could feel his lungs grow raw from screaming continuously. He was growing faint from watching his life spill upon the ground around him, covering the rock at his feet with blood.

His breathing labored and overall his prospect on living slim, Arthur didn't really notice his feet falling out from beneath him in an attempt to walk away. As he was falling back, he felt his head hit something hard, and Arthur fell unconscious immediately after.


	10. Eyes Wide Open

Chapter 10: Eyes Wide Open

The girl woke up with tears in her bright blue eyes, spreading from the creased corners of her lashes to the cherries of her cheeks fluidly as each lid fluttered open to greet a world so strange and new. With each drop of emotion that fell to her chin, the girl fought off a sob of anguish, the light within this new life dwindling to sorrow and pain. Her head was crying out to her as though her skull were constricting upon the fragile brain inside her head, and it took the girl all of her strength to wipe the dew of sadness from her skin without uttering a shout in response. Where was she? Why was she here? Who was she?

There were noises coming from somewhere in the room, a voice was speaking to her through a static signal as the sun violated her field of view with its rays too bright for the head of the beholder. Overstimulation was currently a possibility, and with every laborious breath she took, she willed the light and noise to go away so that she might find some false sense of peace in this world of too much. If nothingness were truly something she could obtain, the lack of all senses handed to her in a gift-wrapped box, this girl would've abandoned this world without a second thought or look behind.

Her headache was subsiding now, the strength leaving a dull soreness upon her frontal lobe as an imprint of it being there, a memory, just in case she forgot what true pain was. Even as she opened her eyes to gaze around at the world surrounding her, she knew nothing of her whereabouts or why she might be there; in fact, she really didn't know anything, even concerning herself. Her eyes strayed down to her outstretched hands-fingernails chipped but painted a brilliant and bright blue, arms scratched but only lightly so, fingers short and chubby-hoping that maybe one of these miniscule details would clue her into who she was and why she was here. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and she just felt like an idiot looking at her hands intensely.

"Ah, you're awake. That's perfect, I have a few questions for you," a voice called from the doorway of what the girl assumed was a hospital room, taking into consideration that she was absolutely sure that this man, dressed in a white jacket with a stethoscope around his neck, was a doctor. He clicked off the TV, playing an older version of the Scooby Doo series, before sitting in a wheelie-chair next to the hand sanitizer dispenser and picking up a notepad and pen. Even though she knew he was only there to help, the girl felt somewhat intruded upon, and pulled her blanket further up her chest.

"Now, my name is . I've been taking care of you since you came in here Saturday, today being the Monday directly after. Would you mind telling me your name, miss?" He smiled, readying his little notepad to be written on as he expected an answer.

Now, this was a really difficult question, and the girl was feeling sort of frustrated that she was expected to know something so important so soon in her small life. As far as she was concerned, she had just been born this morning, and this man had no right to force her to think of such frivolous things as a name-she had just assumed that it would come a lot later, when she had some time to think and choose. Still, she racked her brain as hard as she could for a suitable answer to the question she so hated, wondering if she should just choose one at random or let one claim her though time. How did people come up with names anyway?

"Ma'am, I just need your name, please. We found some identification on you, but we need to make sure that's who you truly are. Can you tell me your name?"

Now she was angry that he was rushing her, and so the girl shot daggers at the doctor sitting next to her so calmly, crossing her arms and filling her voice with snake venom, "How am I supposed to know something like that? I don't even know where I am."

This took the doctor by surprise, preventing his hand from moving as he gaped slightly at the girl. Then, all at once, something clicked in his brain, and the doctor began writing furiously on his little notepad, whispering silently to himself as he did so.

"Ma'am, when is your birthday?"

Again, the girl took some time to think angrily to herself, wishing that the doctor would stop asking her such useless questions and let her figure them out for herself. As she thought back as far as she could, the only memories she had were remnants from since she woke up. If she thought hard enough, flashes of emotion came to her in short bursts, but nothing as vivid as what she knew she had experienced that day.

"I...I don't know, is that something I'm supposed to know by now?"

continued writing, not even looking up at her as his hand moved rhythmically back and forth across the page, "And who is our current president?"

She shook her head, not even trying to think back this time. Nothing in her limited memory had to do with trivia, and she hadn't heard of a president on Scooby Doo. There would be nothing in her fragmented brain that would help her with this question.

"Alright, I want to schedule you for a few brain scans immediately to make sure your brain is safe and sound, but you may be experiencing a form of amnesia. You came into the hospital with a very minor concussion, but it may have been more serious than we thought-usually with traumatic experiences, any amnesia relates back to the accident, but you seem to have forgotten a lot more than just Saturday night. Is there anything you'd like me to call you, or would you rather wait and see if one of the contacts we called in your phone come in to answer for you?"

"I guess you can just call me-"

"Vivienne. Her name is Vivienne." A voice called out from the entrance of the room, the outline of a man standing vigil in the doorway with his long hands rested upon the frame. He was thin, not very tall, and overall somewhat wimpy looking with wide eyes and the jerkiness of anxiety making his movements abrupt. For some reason, the girl felt like she knew him from somewhere, as though he had been a part of her life before her birth this morning.

"May I ask who you are, sir?" The doctor questioned, looking at him skeptically as he clipped his pen to his notepad. The man cleared his throat, somewhat uncomfortable, almost as though he didn't like social interaction and wanted to be anywhere but here, speaking to anyone but the mirror. That was it, she must know this man.

"I'm...I'm her father," he attempted a smile, offering his hand stiffly to the doctor next to the girl's bed with beads of sweat forming on his brow, "Julian Stronack. Her name is Vivienne Stronack, I've come to pick her up and take her back home, we have quite a drive ahead of us."

Vivienne sounded like good name, but she didn't like it. Something about it felt negative, as though it were something she should leave behind, something she already had left behind; and hi name, Julian...the girl looked up at the man with distrust in her eyes, feeling as though he were not someone she could trust. Whoever this man was, he had done something unspeakable to her, an action sh could not forgive. The girl lifted her head proudly to disagree with the man, to give this unlikely stranger a piece of her mind, but another voice entered the room before she could even think to answer.

"Like hell you're her father."

Heels clacking upon the floor of the hospital, a very tall and very thin woman hurried in with the presence of an angry high school principal, her brown hair packed tightly into a neat bun on the back of her head. The woman's lips were pursed and eyes nothing but slits, and she looked as though she were about to tear the man limb from limb. He glanced at her with the fluttering of his heart worn upon his face, evident in the quick breaths he took, terrified of the woman yet still wishing to stand up to her. Like a defiant baby bird, he puffed out his chest and tried his best to look half as intimidating as she did.

"Yes, I am her father. Who are you exactly? You don't have a right to be in here."

"I have more of a right to be in here than your sorry ass. I'm Mary Blecher, the woman who raised your child from middle school onward," She was in front of the girl now, looking directly into her eyes as she grabbed the sides of her face with worry, "Are you alright Vivi? I got here as quickly as I could, I was just upstairs with Arthur before his surgery, you weren't up yet. Do you need anything? I can run down and grab your sweater from the Mystery Van if you like, you look cold."

The girl shook her head, somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of people claiming to be very diverse and important aspects of a life she wasn't sure she was even really a part of. Her thoughts and feelings were all turned around, and bits of her memories were interfering with her own assumptions. Despite the terrifying and intimidating actions and aura of the woman in front of her, she felt safe when she placed her hand upon her shoulder protectively, and even though he seemed mild and just as terrified as she was, the girl couldn't stand the presence of the man who claimed to be her father.

"I'll tell you what she told me many years ago, what she has continued to tell me ever since I met her. Her name is Vivi Mystery, and she long ago abandoned the name Stronack because she didn't want to be anything like you. She didn't want any part of her to lead back to you because you left her to fend for herself when she was too young to even tie her shoes right. When I asked to meet you to thank the man who reared the daughter who saved my son, she denied that she even had a father, claiming that he died a long time ago, and if she hadn't confided in me the truth, I would still think you dead. I have quite a few bones to pick with you, mister, and if we weren't on public property, you would be a dead man. Either you turn tail and run right now, or I do what any parent worth their salt would do and chase you out of here myself, do you hear?" The woman ordered the man, her hand tightening its grip on the girl's shoulder as her voice was raised to a passionately strong shout. Somehow, the words and memories the woman recalled felt strangely right, and the girl-Vivi, as she began to remember-felt that she was hearing the truth from the woman's mouth. In response, she leaned a bit closer into the woman's grasp, allowing her to comfort Vivi further.

The man looked as though he were either about to burst into an angry rage or cry profusely, surprise lighting his face in a shade of embarrassed crimson cheeks. His voice was hardly anything more than a whimper as he tried to take a step forward, to regain the ground he had lost under the scrutiny of the woman guarding his offspring, "I...I have a right to be here. She is my blood, and-"

"I may be your blood, but I am not your family." Vivi spoke up, surprising herself with the darkness in her voice, the low growl that she had resorted to when talking to him. There was a new kind of courage in her veins, filling her with fire, "I may not remember anything, but I know to trust my instinct, and my instinct says that you need to leave. I am Vivi Mystery, and I am not in any way but biology your daughter."

The man sputtered as though he were going to argue with these words, but any determination that had been shown on his face had died the moment she spoke up, and he was left in silence. His eyes grew soft, his mouth downturned, and he bit his lip gently and nervously as he mulled over something deep in his brain. One, two, three steps he took back before finally he turned around and fled just as had asked; the woman had some seriously commanding presence, and Vivi could only imagine how terrifying it must be when you were on the opposite side of her affections. All in all, Vivi was glad to have this woman on her side, and as the tension in the room died down to a light sizzle, everyone within began to relax. Vivi turned to the woman with a little bit of confusion tinting her face, even more confused after the scene that had just played out in front of her.

"You said your name is Mary Blecher. Where do I know you from?" Vivi began to ask, but as the words slipped past her lips and reached into the room, a picture flashed across her mind with the most lucidity she had experienced upon waking, a picture of a boy. He was her age, early twenties, with the same frame as the woman in front of her with hair a near amber orange with a small clump of brunette sticking up rebelliously from the middle, an overall cowardly, scared young man. As vividly as the room in front of her, she remembered this boy she had never seen as though he were standing right beside her. She grasped onto that little bit of memory-an actual picture in a blank, white room-with all of might in hopes that she could hold onto it, explore it, keep it as her own. It was something stable, something familiar in its unfamiliarity, something she needed even if she didn't know how.

"Arthur! You remind me of Arthur! Where is he? Who is he? I must see him, I need to see him." She cried out, grasping frantically at as she tried to climb from her bed. Both the woman and the doctor stood up to push her back into the blankets, trying to prevent her from overworking her aching and sore, sleep-weary body to a point of injuring herself, but Vivi fought them off as best she could. She needed to see the only memory she had, the only person she truly remembered as existing in a world before her rebirth.

"Easy there, tiger," Ms. Blecher tutted, giving the girl a final, firm push back into the bed before straightening her white blouse and adjusting her glasses. Vivi gave into the strength of her two keepers, looking up at the woman with a hurt expression, "Even if you were one hundred percent healthy and able to come and go as you please, Arthur just went into surgery and won't be out for another hour at least."

This startled Vivi, and she could feel her heart sink to the bottom of her empty stomach like a cracked and rusted anchor upon the ocean floor, "Is he okay? What happened?"

With this question she was met by an eerie silence, and if the pain in her heart was anything to go by, Vivi didn't like silence one bit. The doctor stood up, bowed slightly as a farewell with a few kind words, and left the two alone in the room to discuss the boy she remembered so clearly. As he walked out, readied herself to speak with her hands placed neatly on the lap of her pencil skirt.

"Well, Vivi, we don't really know what happened the night that you two came in. Last Saturday, or so the doctor tells me, you and my boy were found in Arthur's van on the side of a fairly deserted road. The ambulance came after you called for emergency help. All the way here neither of you would wake up, so they don't know what really happened in that car, but y Arthur was...he didn't…"

She covered her mouth lightly with a gentle hand, tears edging the corner of her eyes with the threat of falling noiselessly to the floor. stared forward and into the distance as though she hoped that, if she didn't blink, she might not let those precious gems fall from her lids. The woman swallowed the stone in her throat and spoke back with a voice sporting as much control as a drill sergeant, ditching any emotion to look once again at Vivi with glistening eyes, "His arm was ripped off, his entire arm was just...gone. You called and they got down just in time to stop him from bleeding to death, all the doctor's call it a miracle, but he lost his arm. You've both been unconscious for the past few days, and I've been so worried…"

She reached down to hug Vivi fully, embracing the girl and gripping onto her long and hard with the shaking of silent sobs racking her thin body, trying her best to contain them but failing as she curled her fingers in the blue head of the daughter she thought she had lost, "They don't know when he'll wake up, if he'll wake up. They said you had given up, it looked like you wouldn't wake up either, Vivi. I thought I was going to lose both of you at the same time, both of my beautiful children, my two lucky stars. I'm just...I'm so glad you woke up, Vivi. I'm so happy you're okay."

They lingered like that, intertwined as mother and daughter emotionally if not by blood. Something in her embrace was frantic, suffocating, but still Vivi wished she'd never let go of her. In this world of too much, in this moment she wanted more of the woman who she felt so attached to, the woman who had protected her at the most vulnerable of her days.

As pulled away, tears still glistening on her very edgy and prominent face, Vivi felt remnants coming back to her, memories of a childhood long gone in a broken down apartment covered in the knick-knacks of a young and loving girl, littered with scraps of her heart in the form of porcelain figurines and superhero posters. She remembered the orange-haired boy, and she remembered days spent eating at the dinner table of the stern-faced Ms. Mary Blecher, the cheerful girl who'd befriended her son chattering to the quiet family of everything all at once.

"Can I ask you for a favor?" she asked, looking into the amber-orange eyes of the woman who had cared for her for so many years as a daughter of her own, even if she lived apart and was a tad quirky for the serious family she had been adopted into. As Vivi expected, the woman nodded silently.

"Tell me everything, from the moment you met me to the last time I saw you, spoke to you, anything. Tell me every single detail of every single day of you and Arthur and my life, even the miniscule details you don't care about," she pleaded, grabbing the hands of in her own, "I don't know if I'll remember anything, but I know I loved you, and I know I loved Arthur. Tell me everything."

, a bittersweet smile lighting her stone cheeks, was more than happy with this request. She bowed her head slightly as she thought as far back as was possible, her hands still clasped in the chubby fingers of her adopted daughter.

"Well, it all began when a blue-haired angel jumped from her balcony to save my boy…"

* * *

"I see you're still lazing around."

She was standing in the doorway of the hospital room, dog on her heels and flowers wrapped up in her hands, a hand-picked assortment of bright blue and magenta daisies filling a simple glass vase with bursts of bright color, like fireworks at midnight. Everything about her-posture, expression, even movement-denoted a kind of mourning that not even she could understand, and the girl who only wore blue was dressed entirely in black. Gently, she placed the vase of flowers upon the table next to Arthur's bed, watching as Mystery placed his paws on their friend's bed to catch a glimpse of the sleeping boy.

Vivi sat down in a chair next to him, looking out into the night beyond his window with a quiet kind of melancholy that had wrapped its fingers around her, suffocating any chance that she might be cheerful in the days following her rebirth. The only smiles she had nowadays were reserved for Arthur and Mary. Her voice was raw as she spoke, her throat dry and speech crackling.

"I know you'll wake up soon, I just wish you'd hurry up. It's been a week now, Arty, and I'm getting pretty lonely with just your Mom for company," She tried to tease, pulling the chair she sat in just a tad bit closer to the bed, "I mean, don't rush it if you feel you need it to recover, you need to worry about yourself being healthy. I can wait, just don't milk it if you can."

It was silent for a few moments, the lack of noise whirling around Vivi threateningly and driving her just a little bit crazy. With the remote on Arthur's bedside table, she flipped on Scooby Doo as she always did, the only thing she really remembered liking, "You know, it was super hard getting Mystery in here. I'm pretty sure if the nurses find him in here again they'll kick me out for good. I was hoping maybe seeing him again would help you to wake up, but I guess not. He really misses you. I really miss you."

Her hands had snaked up to grab Arthur's remaining one, rubbing circles on the inside of his palm with her thumb gently to comfort herself more than anything, "I've been going through our van-I hope you don't mind, I kinda snooped around in your stuff by accident. I'm guessing your stuff is orange and mine is blue and pink, right? Or maybe you like pink? I don't know, but all of the pink stuff in our van makes me feel...safe, especially the big sweaters. That's why I got you blue and pink flowers, so you'd know they were from me when you woke up."

She looked back down at Arthur from her gaze on the colorful daisies, his eyes still closed in sleep as they always had been with his breathing deep and slow, "I'm starting to remember some things. Your Mom is really helping me with the old stuff, but I feel like there's something missing, Arty. Something important." Vivi tightened her grip slightly, feeling her voice crack just the slightest as she looked down at her black dress, her mourning clothes, "I don't know why, but my heart hurts really bad, like I lost something special and close to me. Maybe I just miss you, talking to you and travelling around and stuff." she licked her lips as her tears subsided, pushing them back into the depths of her mind without indulging them, her mind wandering as it always did, "Did I love you? As more than a friend, or am I thinking too hard? I really don't know, Arthur."

As her words came to an end, Vivi felt her mind fall blank like it so often did without memories to mull over. With nothing else to report or ponder, she fell into the silence she so hated, worshipping the antics on TV without anything else to keep her sane. She leaned down to place a kiss gently upon Arthur's forehead, hoping her touch would bring him back to life as all the fairytales had told her. Her lips lingered just the slightest upon his brow as she tried to feel something more than despair, tried to gauge if she had once felt something towards the ginger-headed boy. Then, without anything more to do, she felt her head lean forward into the crook of his elbow, and Vivi's eyes closed, sleep touching her gently and giving her release.

As she fell into the darkness of night without dreams, Arthur's arm shifted lightly beneath her. Eyes open and hands clenched, he looked up at the ceiling with nothing but regret touching his tattered soul.


	11. Get Me Out Of Here

Chapter 11: Get Me Out Of Here

"Arthur, are you alright?"

Vivi was standing in the doorway, pausing before entering the hospital room with worry lighting her newly sparkling eyes. Something in the way her friend was looking into his lap, something in the way he didn't even look up at her as she entered the room with the clacking of her shoes upon the tiled floors, something in the way his eyes displayed such sadness lead her to fear for his happiness. In the doorway, she paused, and waited, and waited.

He had been like this for what felt like years. Since Arthur had woken up, not once had he smiled at Vivi, and though she didn't remember much about anything she did remember his sideways smirk brightening the room she walked into with every breath she pulled. She remembered his happiness even if he was usually scared, and she knew that something must've been bugging him to lead him to such silence, such brooding thoughts. There is a fluid connection between two best friends who have had their fingers tied together by red string, and she could feel his distress as clearly as the sun shining outside his window.

In all actuality, Arthur had been thinking of Lewis. He hadn't been lucky enough to forget everything, and with every passing second the boy pictured within his tormented head the scene he had tried so hard to push from his memory, the murder of one of his only two friends. He could still feel his hand upon the soft fabric of Lewis' vest, pushing the boy off of the cliff and watching him fall, crying out in confusion at first but then fear as everything was taken away from him in one swift second. His eyes closed so he could gather his thoughts before looking back up at Vivi, hoping she would think him sincere as he spoke.

"The doctor was just in a little bit ago, he said I have to wait at least two months for my prosthetic limb. I just don't know what I'm going to do during all that time, and I guess I'm kind of bitter that all I'm getting is some cheap piece of plastic. If I had two hands, I could definitely make something a whole lot better with my metal."

Something stabbed at his heart with that lie, and he tried to hide his left shoulder as best he could from her line of sight. He really didn't want to be here right now, he didn't want to be with Vivi or the doctor or anyone. Right now, all Arthur wanted to do was stare at the ceiling and dig his nails into his palm so hard that they bled, the pain bringing him a little bit of peace without Lewis on his mind. Instead, he rubbed his left shoulder gingerly, closing his eyes once more to keep Vivi from seeing how lost he truly was.

She sat down next to him, grabbing his hand in hers like she always did when she visitted. That hurt the most.

"I came here for story time, but if you aren't feeling up to it you know I can wait. We can watch a movie or maybe play a game, it doesn't matter much to me. I just want to make sure you're okay, Arthur. Your the only person I got right now."

This made his heart hurt even more. He had thought of leaving her behind more than once, contemplated in all seriousness the possibility that his death may be better for both of them than this guilt and sadness that followed him around instead. Nothing made him happy anymore, not even listening to his best friend light up with her stories and adventures with his mother and all around town. He tried to smile up at her, but it felt awkward and probably looked terrifying.

"No, maybe telling a story will help get my mind off of things. Where did we leave off yesterday?" He fibbed, knowing that it would only do the opposite. As always, he couldn't let Vivi down, and he could tell that she was tired of watching Megas XLR on his bad days. She smiled, unable to contain her excitement at learning more of their past.

"You were just about to talk about our first ghost hunt, but you started feeling tired."

Now he remembered, and he really wished he had chosen to watch a movie instead. Their first ghost hunt was at the high school in the bathroom, when he was still a senior and she had just been promoted to manager of the Tome Tomb. Arthur bit his lip, trying his hardest to come up with a reasonable way to tell the story but divert the attention away from their new friend at the time. He could always say they found nothing, or that they got some interesting readings on the laptop but nothing else.

But why did he have to lie to her? Should he maybe tell her about Lewis, explain to her who he was and how she felt about him...and how Arthur had ended that? He caught her staring out into the distance often, eyes soft with a sadness that she herself couldn't understand The girl of bright blue began to wear bits and pieces of black, and with every outfit she chose a splash of magenta to go along with. Every once in a while, when she thought he was sleeping and she was curled up on the couch in his hospital room, he could hear her sobbing silently to herself. Maybe it was time for him to tell her, time for him to explain just who the man in purple-pink was, the fourth member of the Mystery Skulls.

"Arthur, I think she wants to talk to you."

At the door, a woman waited for Arthur to acknowlege her, her big brown eyes filled with confusion and worry as she lifted a hand to knock on the frame. She was short and chubby, similar in build to Vivi, but her hair was long and black and her skin a darker, richer color than the paleness of the girl right next to him. Arthur could see on Vivi's face that hint of recognition that made her eyes squint and her eyebrows knit, and he grabbed her arm as quickly as he could before she could remember the hispanic woman.

"Vivi, I need you to leave. Right now." He panicked, forcing her to look at him rather than the woman who waited to speak with him, "I don't know how long it'll be, so just go wait for my Mom to come by. We'll have to wait until next time for this story."

"Arthur, is everything okay? What's happening?"

He shook his head, not looking her in the eyes completely as he felt dishonesty rising in his throat and onto his face, "I can't tell you right now, but I'll explain everything later. Go finish looking through the van or reading those ghost books, I just need to talk to this woman in private."

Vivi didn't stand up right away, looking at Arthur with a mix of pain and worry as he urged her to leave him. She wasn't sure she trusted him right now, knowing that he could do some pretty stupid things when he got down on himself-she vaguely remembered a night where she had to talk him out of harming himself after the last time he saw his father, even if the memory was very far away and hard for her to see. Still, she looked at him and saw in his eyes the purest of pleading, and she left the room without any further question, only glancing at the woman as she left.

Arthur looked back up at the woman now, his eyes fading back into the darkness they had come to know so well, "I'm sorry about that, . I know how much you wanted to see her, but...we can't have that right now. Please take a seat."

Hidden beneath piles of duffel bags, Vivi had found a treasure trove within the Mystery Skulls van. Within a ratty old cardboard box, eaten away at by years of neglect and disregard, she had stumbled upon an entire world of books, all carefully annotated by the curving cursive of a very knowledgeable ghost hunter and the more casual and loose pink handwriting and highlighting of someone different. At first, Vivi had just assumed it had been her own, but as time went by she recognized that her own writing style was nothing like either voices. Not remembering who had written in them or where she had gotten the boooks, Vivi settled with the thought that she had bought them from the same person at the bookstore she worked at all that time ago.

She had read through half of them within a week, carefully reviewing each and every word the two had written within them and trying to absorb them as best she could. Remembering things didn't come easy for her, even when it was new information. She was trying to figure out how she could possibly remember everything when she came upon a yellow notepad, the front covered in ghost duct tape, the inside filled to the brim with detailed observations and information on her prior hunts.

Vivi had found the jackpot.

Every supernatural thing she had ever hunted was in there, along with the detailed explanation of how the team overcame them . She saw a description of an encounter with a rustle of reapers as they congregated on the night of New Year's Eve, a chase through the forest with a mystical sprite, and even a chase through a haunted maze infested by cultists. She could feel, with every description she read, her memories coming back to her slowly but surely, bouncing up as though cued or reminded by the words so sloppily pasted upon the page. She saw her and Arthur and Mystery, the whole team, fighting off and dispelling demons and ghosts left and right. Sometimes, she remembered, she would go into haunts by herself-or did she? Part of her felt like she had someone there with her each time, but she couldn't remember who. Would Arthur really let her explore by herself, anyway?

"Excuse me, Vivi," A familiar voice called out from behind the girl. She whipped around, dropping the notepad lightly onto the floor as she was startled by the sudden noise when she thought she was all alone, "I don't mean to intrude, I just...I wanted to come say hello and goodbye."

It was the woman, the short hispanic woman Vivi had left Arthur with a few hours prior before coming down to finish looking through the van, "No, you're quite alright." Vivi smiled, standing up to come to the back door of the van with hands clasped in front of her, feeling as though she knew this woman but not finding her in any of her retrieved memories, "I'm sorry, I don't remember you. I don't know if Arthur mentioned that, I lost my memory. What was your name?"

The woman looked down sadly at this. As Vivi drew near, it was clear that the woman had been crying, her brilliant brown eyes tinged with the redness of tears. Vivi sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the van as the woman composed herself as best she could, taking in a large breath as she looked at Vivi with the biggest smile she could muster.

"My name is Mirabel, I was...my family was fond of you. I just came by to check on Arthur and you after I heard what happened. It was a little too far to travel with the whole family, but I tell you they all miss you very much." she blinked hard as Vivi tried her best to remember her, feeling something clawing at the side of her head each time she thought she grabbed the memory, "I know you probably won't be coming through your hometown very often or soon, but if you ever need a place to stay..."

Vivi smiled through the pain of the headache that was beginning to form in her head, trying her absolute best too look at her with understanding and reassurance, "Of course, I'd love to hear all about how we met. Who knows, I might remember by time I see you next!"

The woman didn't speak for awhile, and when she did it was not with her words but through a very tight and suffocating hug. With every second Vivi was wrapped in her arms, Maribel's arms tightened, and Vivi might've panicked if she didn't feel so at home, "You were like family to us. I'm sorry this happened to you, Vivi. I'm sorry it happened to him, too."

She let go of Vivi to give her one last pat on the back, leaving without looking back into the parking lot. Vivi assumed she meant Arthur, but there was a sneaking suspicion within her heart that she wasn't referring to the girl's best friend. As she began to entertain the possibility, a pang of pain ran through her head, and Vivi decided to push those memories away. Clearly, she wasn't ready to view them yet.

She was about to turn around when she saw Arthur approaching, holding his left shoulder carefully in his hands, wires flying from the exposed skin. Her heart burst into her throat as she watched him running towards her, eyes frantic and breathing heavy as he went as quickly as he could, "Arthur, what the hell? What are you doing down here, you need to go back up to your room!"

He shook his head as he came to a stop in front of the van, placing his hand on his knee while he panted out a reply, "I can't take it, Viv, I can't take another day of being in there." He swallowed, looking up at her with those sad eyes begging her to listen, "I don't want a damn prosthetic, I want to make my own arm with my own hand. I want to be on the road again. I want to travel with you and get away from these memories. You don't remember what happened that night, but I do, and..."

She stopped him, her grin bittersweet as she offered him a hand into the van, interrupting him as he said the only words she had wanted to hear from day one, "You don't have to explain, Arthur," Part of her wanted to know, but she was just happy that he still was her friend, that he still wanted to follow her into the darkness that they had claimed a year or so before, "Let's get out of here."


	12. Physically Sound

Chapter 12: Physically Sound

Lewis was floating in the neverending darkness.

He was suspended by a clear string, held precariously by nothing more than a thing chance and a little bit of misplaced hope that somehow, he would get himself out of this mess. His darkness was more than turning off the lamp at night: it was a thick oil wrapped around him, sticking to his skin and seeping into his pores with the poison of the unknown creeping into his gaping jaw. He couldn't see anything through the denseness around him, couldn't breathe with the suffocating nothingness that held him so firmly, but for some reason he didn't need to. Lewis didn't need to breathe or see or know just where he was in order to know just what he was here to do.

He had to kill Arthur.

Something grabbed him, pulled him from the darkness gently and carefully, their hands soft and loving as they held tightly onto his wavering existence and lead him away. He tried to turn around, tried his hardest to catch a glimpse of the one whole held him so dearly, but still the blackness was too thick, and still he couldn't move save for the pathway they made for him. They were pulling him along as though he were floating on a lazy stream with the sluggishness and patience of not having to worry.

_Who are you?_

The voice that met his conscious was that of many, sung in such a sing-song voice that it could've been a melody carried through the oil thickness by a wayward breeze or ripple in the liquid around him. Each sang a harmony of the same song, each raising their voice into a different note and heading down a different harmonic path. They were asking him for an identity, questioning who he was as they pulled him along the river slowly, quizzing him on something he wasn't sure he truly knew himself. Even if he didn't know, he remembered the name assigned to him, the name he was known by. He tried to clear his throat but discovered he didn't have one.

"I am Lewis."

The disappointment of his carriers was nearly tangible, leaving flashes of color to stain the oil in front of Lewis. This answer was not something that satisfied them, and as they continued to pull him slowly along, their voices were raised once more into the world around him.

_Who are you, truly? You are no longer just a name. You are much more._

The world in front of him was black once again, the splashes of color gone from his field of view and hidden as he tried to close his eyes, the eyes he no longer had. Nothing made sense, and he felt himself growing angrier and angrier as he began to miss his body, his physical form, his ability to understand what was happening to him. The darkness in front of him was begging to be painted, pleading to be stained and colored upon, and with the vividness of lividness his voice, though not spoken, was nearly a yell as he cried out into the darkness surrounding him.

"I am anger. I am hatred. I am the one who was betrayed. I am the one who would take a bullet yet was stabbed in the back. I am the one who seeks revenge."

The voices were silent, absorbing the icy blues and cold whites that splashed onto the blank canvas in front of them with focus and thought. Lewis could feel his soul rising with every word, lifting itself to meet the emotion that ruled him so completely in this world of darkness. Nothing else mattered to Lewis in these moments of non-existence, nothing but the fall of the one who let him fall into this nothingness, the demise of the one who killed him so coldheartedly. With every ounce of his being, he hated the one he had called his best friend, and in that instant he was only the burning cold hatred of the last moments of his life.

_Is that who you truly are?_

Before Lewis could answer back with what he believed to be the truth, a resounding and definite yes, he paused and pondered who he truly was inside this icy cold heart. Was he truly a being made only of hatred and revenge, or was there something more to him? His memories flashed further back to his siblings, the immense warmth he felt for them; he thought of his parents and how, despite their caging of his own dreams and aspirations, how he would do anything to please them and keep their own dream alive; and most of all, he thought of the girl in blue, the one he had loved enough to make her forget.

"No, I am more. I am compassion. I am love. I am the blanket that protects the ones I love in the dead of night. I am the one who sacrificed her memories for her comfort and sanity. I am in love."

Now the world in front of him inherited a new shade, overrun with so many hues of pink and red and orange that the beings who dragged him along were forced to stop in order to gaze fully at its brilliance, its luminescence. They reached out their tiny arms to grip the colors that made the sky so bright, humming lightly as they touched the paint upon the canvas. Lewis looked at their many arms, their white complexion, and he remembered in that instance the pale things that had lead him towards Vivi in the first place, the indents of their hearts filling with the colors that made him who he was.

Lewis restricted view widened, and he was now fully aware of them. It came back to him in a storm, the humming and singing voices raised in the gothic mansion with the harmonies that only the greatest of choirs could hope to replicate, the way they had grabbed and brushed against him so curiously. Here they were, caressing him and the colors he brought so beautifully into the darkness, caring for him loyally and dutifully as he floated in the nothingness. They had been waiting for him, they needed him in order to be whole.

All of them were turning pink now, absorbing his love over his hatred with the eagerness of children on Christmas day. With each swipe they grabbed the color that Lewis had stained the brightest, a color of love and gentleness, the one he wore so often and with such pride even in life. He felt a pulse fill the air, and with it their hearts filled with flames. He was no more than a husk, a shell, a glass locket lacking the colors of the world and emotion around him, and yet with that pulse he was filled with the hatred and love he felt so dearly to him. On the outside, the hatred of Arthur turned him orange; on the inside, Vivi's smile reminded him of his love.

_What do you look like?_

The ghosts surrounding him were fully pink now with the same orange heart he had become, their eyes opening as they swirled around him as they had the first time they had seen him, their hands touching him without ever breaking contact. He knew exactly what he had become, more than just a ball of energy neatly shaped into a meaningful symbol: he was the locket that he had rested above his chest, his soul running towards this tether before it could be forced into whatever afterlife waited for him, connecting and becoming the glass necklace and tying itself to the picture inside. But what was he truly? What fully represented him, what was his true form in this new life.

"I am the skeleton of my former self, a phantom in the face of my living form. My joints are filled with the profound darkness that once surrounded me, and my ribs still surrounding the only thing I have now. I am no more than a heart protected by the bones of my past."

With every word leaving his mouth, with each picture he formed in his head, Lewis felt himself changing into something new, something he could never fully imagine. He was whatever his imagination could create, and yet the ones who lead him from the darkness made him even better, gave him another kind of life. His hands were black and plated with bone, his body similar to what he had once been but wrapped in suit with highlights of magenta, his chest wrapped in ribs to protect his center of being, his heart. He lifted a hand to feel his head, no more than a skull. This was who he had become, who he felt he truly was now.

_Now, finally, where are you?_

Lewis didn't know where to start. He thought of all the places he had ever been in his relatively short life, every adventure and every home, even back to the little house his family owned in Mexico. Every moment of his life played before him in a slideshow of possibilities, and for awhile he searched for what had made him the happiest, where he had been during the height of his life. It came to him with a burst of utmost certainty.

"I am in the mansion with Vivi."

The world around him morphed, the oil banishing itself to become the house he saw so vividly in front of his glowing pink eyes. Beneath his feet appeared the hard wooden floors, scuffed and scratched after years of neglect, the wallpaper ripped and peeling with the faded stripes turning dusty and bleached in places where the sun met the dark. Down the hallway, he gazed with melancholy, were the candles she had so adored, she had become so immersed in...he looked away, not able to look at them without feeling the heart he held his hand over become frozen with pain and longing. The ghosts whirled around him still, waiting for something.

"Is this it, where I'll be staying for the rest of my undeath?"

_Only if you want it to be._

He thought deeply to himself, contemplating how he should set up the rest of the mansion, not quite wanting to live in one room for the rest of eternity. He had seen from the entryway the chandelier so long ago, and as he remembered the moment fondly where her eyes had lit up with such love and adoration, the candles along the wall burst into pink fire. As he pictured each and every little thing in his mind, it became a reality, and it didn't take long before he was surrounded by the fully formed mansion just as he thought it had been.

He focused again on his new friends, feeling so indebted to the no longer pale things that waited so diligently on him, the ones who had brought him out of the darkness. With just a little bit of uncertainty entering his tired voice, he looked back upon his work with only her in his mind, only the shining of her curious eyes and the smile so cutely shaped upon her mumbling lips.

"Do you...do you think she would like it?"

And his new friends looked upon him with their orange eyes opened wide and full of the flames of his past, never straying from their loyalty to their new master as they continued their song.

_She would love it._

* * *

"Hey, Viv, can you pull over for moment?"

It was the dead of the night, the freeway beneath the van humming a continuous note into the starry sky above them, clear of clouds and opening up before them as they traversed the Midwest. Vivi hated driving the car in any situation as she was painfully aware of how easy it was for her to get distracted by anything she found mysterious, including but not limited to broken down houses, spooky forests, and giant ominous caves billowing green smoke. Arthur had never let her drive his beloved van with this in mind, knowing they'd never get to their destination, but she had been strangely focused on getting to where they were going-nowhere, to be exact. He couldn't drive with only one arm, and she was doing a very good job at staying on track as though she knew her last curious exploration had lead to something absolutely dreadful.

She pulled over, the road empty save for a few stray cars heading somewhere or other. Arthur had been working day and night on his robotic arm, chugging energy drinks and iced coffee as though he breathed caffeine. In the past few weeks he had probably read more books than in his entire life on the nervous system and prosthetics, using his prior knowledge on metal working and mechanics to create something he had hoped would work. After many painful connections and even more failures, it was clear that Arthur wasn't going to give up on his new limb.

"Same as always, can you help me connect some of the wires? I can't reach all of them with only my right hand." He asked, offering up the metal limb as she leaned forward. She hadn't noticed with her focus on the road, but already half of the wires sticking from his arm were connected to their partners in the metal, "If this works I'll solder them, but this'll have to do until I can get to my tool kit."

She reached her hands over the metal, her clumsy fingers growing accustomed to the task, "How did you get all those wires in your shoulder anyway? I know you know metal, but I didn't think you were a surgeon or anything."

He didn't look away from her hands as he answered back, watching her carefully for any slight misstep, "They connected them to my shoulder while I was still in the hospital. Prosthetics have come a lot further than I thought they had, but none of them are as good as this arm will be once I totally finish it. I won't be able to truly feel anything other than the metal against my shoulder, but I should be able to move it just like my old one." He was lost in thought, a genuine smile gracing his usually frowning lips, :Maybe one day, I'll be able to upgrade it to feel pressured at least, maybe even the complexities of my right arm, but I just don't know enough about anatomy to do that now."

This was exactly what Vivi had been waiting for, and as Arthur was lost in lala-land, she shoved his arm into its socket. With a high-pitched yelp and an overdramatic flinch backwards, he gripped his newly connected shoulder tenderly with his eyes staring at his friend in both surprise and distrust. She wiped her hands on her skirt dutifully.

"What the hell was that?"

"I've seen you put it in enough times to know how to connect your arm, Cheeto. It's better when you can't mull over how much it'll hurt, when you don't know when its coming-I watched you last time, you took an entire day to connect the last arm. Now we have quick results. How does it feel?" Vivi smiled. Arthur was still running a hand over his flesh gingerly, not quite ready to try it out. The first few moments of connection were always the most painful, and he wasn't looking forward to the next few exercises.

He lifted his hand forward, smacking his face comically as he overestimated the force necessary to perform the simple action.

Vivi was trying her hardest not to break out laughing as she merged back onto the freeway, but Arthur, who would usually show an amazing amount of embarrassment at his miscalculation, was ecstatic. After at least twenty attempts, he had finally gotten the arm to move more than a few inches-this was a moment to be celebrated, a point at which his life would turn around, a day to rejoice.

"Holy shit, Viv, did you see that? I think...I think this is it! I made my arm, a made a working robotic arm!" He fell into a sort of maniacal laughter, tipping his head back as his eyes burned bright as flames. He lifted his arm into the air triumphantly, "I am unstoppable!"

Now Vivi was giggling at her friends clear enthusiasm, absolutely ecstatic herself at the thought that he was truly smiling, truly laughing at something other than her. There had been times where she thought he would never truly smile again, never crack his little puns and snide comments, never again would he truly be happy; but here and now, Arthur was smiling a pure and genuine smile, his laugh more than just a show he put on for his friend. He was filled with accomplishment, brimming with pride, finally showing the signs of healing into what Vivi remembered. Even if her memory was limited, she remembered that much.

He was looking a little calmer now, his face bittersweet with a smile that wasn't quite happy, but still genuine, "You know I didn't think I was gonna make it at times. I didn't want to make it." he looked over at her, rolling his metal wrist as he continued testing out the movement, "Maybe losing this arm was a blessing, so I could immerse myself so much in creating a new one...I'm still sad, but I think I can be happy again. I think I can live with myself."

Vivi's clear happiness faded to confusion, a new sense of worry infiltrating deeply into the sense of safety and new joy she was only now experiencing, "I thought the reason you were sad was because of your arm. If you hadn't lost it, you wouldn't have been sad, right?"

Arthur's eyes flashed quickly with a little bit of understanding, dulling once again as she felt the lie leaving his lips, if only to protect her from the memory he knew would surface at the moment of him admitting his fault, "Yeah, that's it. I guess you're right, I wouldn't have...I wouldn't have felt so sad without losing the arm, huh." He searched around the van, hoping to find a means of escaping the awkward situation without pulling any more attention to his little slip up. He decided to change the subject, his eyes meeting the fading stripes of Mystery's head and jumping on the opportunity, "You know, we really need to re-dye him. He's getting a little pink, don't you think?"

She shifted just a little bit in the driver's seat, knowing that he wasn't telling her something, wishing that she had listened to him completely when he had nearly explained to her what had happened the night they came to the hospital, "Arthur, you know that if you ever need to talk, I'm here. I'll understand." He was looking into his lap to avoid catching her eye, his own downcast and hands still as he stopped testing his arm, "I don't care what you did or how it happened, I'm here for you. Forever. You're never getting rid of me, not now or ever."

She could see him smirk just the slightest out of the corner of her reaching eyes, "Yeah, I know, I know. How about we grab a motel? I'm getting really tired, and I think my back is a little too sore for the van tonight. Are we near any towns?"

Vivi continued driving, a little sad that he wouldn't share it with her tonight. She knew he would in due time and that whatever Arthur was hiding from her was for the best of both of them in any situation, "Just this next exit." He'd never put his friends in danger, not in a million years.

She caught herself thinking this, surprise knitting her eyebrows as she pondered her own thinking, wondering if a memory was about to surface for the first time in a few months. Something flashed in her mind, trying to surface, but the only thing that she accomplished was to correct herself. Arthur had only one friend, her. What had she been thinking about that had been so forcefully pushed to the back of her brain? Who had she been thinking about that she didn't want to remember?


	13. Something Old, Something Familiar

Chapter 13: Something Old, Something Familiar

The van doors slammed with a jarring bang, caging the three who bounded inside with the safety of automatic locks and the protection of a metal exterior as a lick of explosive magic came chasing after them. With the cold, dry air surrounding their little safe haven, the sparks of electrical magic engulfed hungrily the fort they held so silently, searching for a weak spot, a tiny crack with which to infiltrate and annihilate, greedy hands of lightning gripping the windows and doors with determination.

The three who had jumped inside breathed heavily within the freezing interior, their exhales creating fog upon the windows lit up so magnificently by the power outside. It must have been at least a minute before those reaching fingers began to recede into the forest with which they came, but to the ones who waited, it must have been hours. Their adrenaline filled the space of a second with the suffering of days, and while they could not hold their breath, it was no less terrifying to be hunted and pursued so violently. As the energy outside faltered in their pursuit, all three gave sighs of breath they didn't have, turning towards each other in a sort of relief and camaraderie that only nearly dying seems to bestow.

The boy lifted two hands to his face, eyes widening as he reassured himself that he was, in fact still alive. The dog, still panting heavily from the jog, had hidden himself at the feet of his owner on the passenger side, burying his face into her hands as he whined through his nose. The girl, on the other hand, had broken into a bout of laughter so strong and shaking, she could feel her sides split with joy and excitement.

"That was amazing! I would never have believed that fae-people could be so...so..."

"Murderous?" Arthur cried out, his voice cracking as he ran his good hand slowly through his amber hair, avoiding eye-contact as he stared straight ahead, "Aggressive? Violent? Cannibalistic? I could go on, you know, I just watched Tinkerbell devour her sisters, after all."

Vivi stuck her tongue out towards her friend with a playful sense of fun, thinking her coworker and comrade was teasing, "It wasn't that bad, you big wuss. They were just playing around is all, they didn't know we couldn't handle massive explosions."

Arthur was still very tense, his metal arm leaving a dent in the steering wheel as he spoke furiously through his teeth, "Vivi, we almost died, and you're laughing about it? This is why I don't let you choose our hunts! You always put us in bad situations, things we only narrowly get out of!"

He was hunched over, squinting into the distance as a fog began to settle around them. His tone of voice was grating on her nerves, and the usually laid-back disposition of Vivi found itself prickling with the heat of annoyance, her voice tainted with distaste and frustration, "Because all the jobs you choose are fake."

Silence. He didn't respond to Vivi, and that in itself scared her more than any ghost investigation could. When Arthur was angry, he argued and spoke through his teeth as like a mouthy teenage boy just begging for a smack on the mouth; when he was furious, he replaced any noise with the subtle and disturbing lack of it, filling the van with that sort of disappointment you only get from a fuming father. He had fallen into the second option, every movement of his stiff body so slow and deliberate as he drove them along the barely lit, abandoned road. With every ounce of his being, Arthur had feared something more than death back there-she could feel it rolling off of her friend in angry waves.

Vivi hadn't been allowed to choose their hunt for a long time, usually letting Arthur persuade her into investigations they both knew were fake or not dangerous at all. It took her weeks to convince him to help banish the fae-folk she had been called about, and even then, she knew he only agreed to it because it looked harmless enough. No one ever would expect playful sprites of anything malicious, but the information she withheld from Arthur-a young girl with a broken leg whispering of a fairy princess and a teenage boy found dead and covered in pixie dust-lead her to suspect they were more than mischievous. She had been so excited to take a real job with a hint of adventure and mystery to it, she may have forgotten to mention how pissed off they get when you try and relocate them from their home in the woods, and how murderous some fairy sprites had been recorded as.

She remembered choosing all the haunts before Arthur and her ended up in the hospital, taking every caller and chatting with every client thoroughly; what had happened? It had been absolutely wonderful for Arthur's social anxiety to take all of their calls and talk through all of their jobs, but after two years, Vivi was starting to feel excluded from the business aspect of her team. Had she been the reason Arthur had lost his arm? Was it through one of the jobs she carelessly chose that they had ended up in that hospital?

With these questioning thoughts, she felt a shot of pain run through her head, and she leaned over with bile rising in her throat, her body suddenly racked by nausea. It hurt, but this was good: it meant she was remembering something, or at least trying to. Every time she had come close to memories of that night she had shied away at the last minute, feeling her head throb and her body weaken, but now she had the possibility presented in front of her and she was going to take it. There was a flash of pink across her mind, magenta across the blackness of her closed eyelids. She could nearly see it, the outline, the fog, even a little bit of color...

Mystery nosed his way further into her hands, poking his head out from her fingers and looking at her with eyes filled with a strange sense of command and sentience, as though he knew what she was trying to do. Somehow, her dog had comprehended her actions, and he did not want her to remember by the look of it; still, she couldn't unsee the picture that had appeared as a blur before her eyes.

The black cave, surrounded by thorns and billowing smoke.

Arthur looked down at her, head in hands and arms on knees as she tried to deal with the sickness that was overcoming her. A tinge of guilt edged onto his expression, and he reached his good hand out to cup her shoulder, "Geez, Viv, I didn't mean to upset you that much. Are you okay?" his eyes flicked between her and the road hurriedly, "I just can't handle hunts like that 'cause I know I can't handle losing you, too. We've given so much of us to this job, and I'm not ready to give our lives away."

It was fairly quiet, the road being so small that only their car drove down it, slowing steadily as Arthur contemplated pulling over. Vivi seriously looked like she was about to hurl chunks, and he guessed the bumps in the poorly maintained street beneath them wasn't helping much. In reality, Vivi was just mulling over his words, letting them sit upon her mind as she reached down to pet Mystery rhythmically. Her shoulders were slouched down, slightly shying away from the touch of her friend as her back began to ache and her headache slowly cleared. Her mind was trying desperately to find meaning in his words, trying to remember what they had given Arthur's arm and Vivi's memory to so long ago, attempting to pinpoint the monster or ghoul or nightmare that had taken the most from both of them.

She was left only with that cave, the imprint of granite clear in her mind.

Vivi lifted up her head, emulating as pleasant a smile as she could at Arthur with her eyes closed pleasantly and bushy head steadied, letting go of Mystery to jump into the middle seat, "It's okay, Arty, I just got a bit of motion sickness, I ain't all that mad," she reassured, opening her eyes just a crack to see Arthur's face, "but you're right, I should be more careful. I've always thought that, even if the world does us in, we've at least got each other-I guess I should focus more on not letting the world kill us off in the first place, huh?"

Arthur looked over at her bright face, feeling his own stone frown mimic her cloudy cheeks easily and eagerly with the forgiveness of a forgetful child. She cast a spell upon him with the lighting of her face, the glowing of her cheeks, and though only a few minutes ago he had been ready to explode on the girl in a mix of angry terror and horrifying what-ifs, now he was just happy to have her by his side. Lewis had been so hard to lose-he still thought constantly about him, even two years later-but if he had lost Vivi that night or any day after, Arthur would not have let himself live.

As he opened his toothy grin to reply with his own thoughts and feelings, he felt something shudder beneath him and within his van, his baby crying out to him in the tiniest of screeched and screams, bumping and sputtering along with what little effort it could give before beginning to slow. Something tragic hit his heart like an arrow, and Arthur dropped his eyes, along with Vivi's and Mystery's, to the dashboard past his metal fingers. On the other side of the little window, the lights and gauges blinked feebly with flashes of pink light, growing and decaying like a beating heart. As the car slowed to a jerky stop, all was silent.

Arthur, mouth dry and hands shaky, feared whatever words came out of his mouth, knowing deep down that whatever he said might not be audible through the shivering of his voice, "Did...did my ol' girl just bail on me?"

Vivi would have snickered if she wasn't touched by a hint of fear herself, pulling out her phone and flipping it forward to check for a signal, "We don't have any bars out here," she looked at Arthur, her eyes accusatory as the dog and her watched him carefully, "didn't you just give her a tune-up less than a week ago?"

Arthur turned towards her, eyes guilty and smile tilted worriedly as he felt a bead of sweat roll across his forehead, "I may have, uh, skipped a few minor checks in order to go to the mall arcade with you. No big deal, right?"

If he hadn't been so damn cute, Vivi might've strangled her best friend to death. She looked out the front window and into the foggy and dark street ahead, her won side window nothing but black thorn, and then Arthur's, hoping to spot something-or someone-that might be able to help them out. Arthur himself was furiously attempting to restart the van, but every time his baby tried to hiccup into life, the weaker and feebler she became and the more distorted her engine sounded.

"Hey, there's a house down that driveway there. I'm sure I can get a phone call in there, maybe a ride into town if we're lucky enough. A jump start would be nice, too, but I don't see any cars-do we know what's up with her?" Vivi suggested, looking at her friend hopefully as he continued to rev the engine. He glanced out his window as she spoke to him, spotting the ominous house and double-taking the scene as he shook his head at her.

"Oh no, no, no. You are not going up there, uh-uh. We are staying put, maybe pushing the van further away from that...that..." A shiver ran through his body as he sized up the gothic mansion, glowing pink windows and all, trailing off as he continued to shake his head vigorously, "We can wait until another car passed and wave them down. We are not going anywhere near that."

He hadn't noticed that Vivi had already jumped out of the car, Mystery following his owner loyally as she stepped onto the damp ground beneath their tires, "You don't have to go, Arty-Mystery will keep me company. You do what you can for our number one teammate, we'll get someone down here to help start her up."

This lead Arthur to his big decision of the day: would he follow the lead of his friend into what he saw as certain death and the loss of everything he loved and held dear, or would he hide behind his cowardice as he watched the ones he loved march so bravely into the afterlife? There was no way that the house wasn't haunted-it glowed with the luminosity of a thousand flamboyantly colored suns-but there was no stopping Vivi now that she had laid her eyes upon it, and . Either they both left this world, or he lived with whatever consequence came afterward.

As his best friend hurried across the open road, it was clear to Arthur that he really didn't have any choice at all. If he was going to keep Vivi safe, give her any chance of survival, he couldn't hang in the van like he used to when there had been four of them. As fast as Arthur's legs could possibly run, he followed Vivi across the empty street and up the stone steps towards the most ominous house he had ever witnessed, the rock in his stomach weighing him down as he looked upon what would clearly change-or end-his life.

Their feet were resonant against the stairs beneath them, Vivi's heels clacking especially noisily upon the well-polished, beautifully constructed ground beneath them. Before they were even halfway up, he could feel the power radiating from the house in front of them, just like climbing waves upon the sea shore. With every new rush of water forward the blanket of ocean pulled itself further up the sand, just as the neon pinkness of the light within the house clawed and grabbed at them. The doors swung open as the power emanating from within reached a peak, spilling the light within in a flood of gushing water, nearly blinding as it reached out towards the curious eyes that beheld the spectacle within. Inside, Vivi swore she could here a distant humming, some sort of siren's song calling them forward promisingly.

All Vivi could think was how beautiful the mansion was.

"Okay, fuck this, I'm not doing this. Nope, not dying today, let's go." Arthur began mumbling, turning around on his heels as he tried to hurry back towards the van and safety. Vivi must have anticipated the reaction of her friend as she shot a hand backwards, grabbing her best friend by the collar of his vest without ever taking her eyes off the magnificence that was the house I front of her, the mystery unfolding like an aged map upon a wooden table.

"No Arty, we're already this far, we might as well see it through." Those words killed him, and she looked back with the same eager smile he remembered so clearly from before, giving his shirt a light tug when he didn't jump forward with enthusiasm like she was so ready to do, "Come one, we have a mystery to solve!"

Arthur didn't want to hear that, didn't want her to latch onto a commitment with this house, and he definitely didn't want her to feel as though she had a duty to explore the depths within fully and totally. Yet, here he was, and there she was, so immersed in the house in front of her that she didn't think one bit of the dangers that no doubt waited within to gobble them up and leave them in eternal despair. As Vivi gave the boy a strong pull forward and towards the opened double doors ahead, there wasn't much Arthur could do to resist-this was the life he had chosen, the life of Vivi, and in that way he was no more than a wayward slave to the whims of the blue girl. She pulled his little raft along, her light the tugboat that pulled him against the merciless currents of the river, and so he followed her so dutifully into the pink light ahead that was so blinding.

He closed his amber eyes to shield them from the brightness that met his gaze, but as they passed the threshold into a new world entirely, it disappeared from behind his lids. Still he kept his eyes shut tight, hoping that is he didn't look maybe it would all disappear, and the house in front of them would be nothing but normal after all. He heard someone singing, their voices muddled by some sort of interference-the walls, maybe, as though something were separating whatever ghostly choir had gathered in order to protect or shield the three who had entered from the ghastly melodies that rose into the dark hallways. There was a chill running in not from behind them and outside, but from much deeper inside the mansion, alluding to something much colder within; definitely a sign of some paranormal activity just waiting to happen or kill them or something horrible.

"Arty, look." Vivi whispered as she paused inside their new setting, absorbing the whole view with eyes wide open and mouth parted as she inhaled everything in, trying her best to completely engulf herself in every aspect of this wonderful, new place, "There's nothing scary here, just...look."

She had let go of his hand, and the frantic search for that little bit of connection with his only tie to safety forced him to spring his lids up like window shades. His protector had taken a few steps forward, her arms held close to her side as she wandered very slowly away, a balloon meant to wander the warm blue sky stuck in this house of dark purple and mystery. He lifted his metal arm up in a pre-flinch, preparing himself for whatever was to come before he knew entirely what was coming, "D-don't wander too far, Viv. I need you back here in the 'I have no clue what I'm doing' squad."

Her head turned briefly, and the smile that graced her lips was worth his current suffering, "You'll be fine, just look around! This place...it feels so-"

There was a deafening crash, and everything became thick with darkness.

Just as the morning sky can be many hues of brightness, the dark of night can be thousands of shades of nothingness. in this mansion, there was a whole new species of black, an entirely different form of oily mystery that wrapped around those who wandered too far in, showing nothing but the whites of the eyes of the beholders. If Arthur had thought the starless sky had been intimidating, he had never truly been exposed to the intense lack of light that he met here, within the mansion of his nightmares.

And yet, Vivi found it soothing, as though she were being wrapped in a blanket and coddled. Her eyes blinked lightly as she slowly began to remember where she had encountered this place before, struggling as she always did to form a picture in her head with the little scraps of parchment she was given by the greedy protector of her locked away secrets. Now, all she could feel was emotion, the wonder of entering a new mystery and holding in her hands the knowledge and wisdom of the spirits within, of hearing them sing as they began now, of watching the candle flame flicker aimlessly with someone's eyes boring adoring holes into the back of her neck, thinking she didn't notice.

Who was the one who had stared at her so lovingly within this house of her memory?

There was a magenta light traveling slowly in front of her now, lead on by an invisible master as the singing from far away grew louder and more concentrated. It didn't pause as it passed in front of the shocked faces of the three visitors, and with the gentleness of new fire, it lit the candles two by two. Patience at first gripped the eager wicks as they popped into the world, but with the expectation and anticipation of guests, they began to accelerate their own birth, jumping into the pinkness of life with the quickness of a foxtrot. The uniform flames bounced to the elaborate chandelier in the gorgeously adorned foyer, and with the force of fire bursting into its nurturing arms, the chandelier was pushed into the brightness of light.

Vivi nearly screamed in excitement and joy as every room was filled with the amazingly bright magenta light that danced so merrily in front of her widened eyes, but Arthur and Mystery weren't so hot on the magical ghost candles. Arthur felt as though their was more to this haunted house than he could recall, that their being stalled wasn't by some accident or coincidence and that something wanted them their, someone had called them to their home with the idea of blood on their mind. Mystery's sixth sense only confirmed that, and his eyes were flitting about the house as he tried to determine the disturbance by smell and sight. This mansion was just a little too much for both the dog and the coward.

Out of the corner of their eyes they saw the paintings in the left hallway light up, their eyes boring curious holes into the intruders with the brightness and color of the candles in front of them. In the foyer, Vivi caught a glance of something pink approaching, the voices growing louder as their owners rose up from beneath the chandelier and into the open with the commanding grace of stage performers comfortable with their craft, moving animatedly from one room to the next without much more than a few syllables and the grace of swans gliding upon the water.

The phantoms ahead of them approached quickly then, appearing behind Vivi and Arthur and Mystery without much warning save for the continuous singing in their voices. If there were words, Vivi couldn't make them out through the excitement that rendered her deaf-her smile spread from ear to ear in an open-mouthed, wide-eyed display of enchantment, as though she were a young child seeing Disneyworld for the first time. Her hands were lifted to her face as she whispered quietly to herself, taking in the situation and absorbing the scene with the hunger of someone who has forgotten everything. This experience, no matter how familiar, was a new thrill that she had never experienced in the time since her rebirth, and she wanted more.

The ghosts were mouthing a syllable, the soft 'mo' that was raised questioningly with the melody. Arthur still held himself mid flinch, ready to bolt as they rose up one by one in an arc around him and his team with an uncertain frown gracing his cheeks. Mystery too observed with caution, his red eyes raised as he lifted his nose to give the air a definitive sniff, inhaling the smell that wafted from the ghosts surrounding them and recognizing it immediately as he looked up at Vivi wit worry flitting in his eyes. Even the dog-in fact, especially the dog-knew that this was not a good place for the girl to be with her current lack of knowledge on their old friend.

As the performers ended the first act of their song, the eyes of the ghosts opened wide, and their mouths distorted as they screamed a shrill note at the three who gawked at them, curling their tiny fingers as they leaned forward and swayed dramatically. This was a little too much for the Mystery Skulls, and with living still on the list of their future plans, they bolted one by one away from the ghosts who had moments earlier been singing so beautifully for them, raising their voices into the darkness and quiet surrounding them and filling it with the melodies of love and the fear of hate. If Vivi hadn't been so busy following Arthur, her mind chasing after him as he shouted a call forward, she may have noticed the gentle hands of the pink ghosts reaching out to grab her longingly with hands running through her hair and gripping her sweater, almost as if they wished to hold her back for themselves.

Their legs, filled with the energy of adrenaline, pumped rhythmically as they accelerated down the hallway Arthur had chosen, surrounded on all sides by the faces of paintings whose eyes moved to watch them diligently like sentries watching the shadows of the night in enemy territory. Suits of armor shifted uneasily under the weight of their metal cages with their heads turning just slightly to gaze at the ones who ran quickly past them, and ahead, Arthur could see the pink tail of one of the ghosts from earlier snake into the helmet of the suit as its eyes flared to life, animating the sluggish phantom into an angry demon. The arm of metal lifted its sword with a jerk forward, and Arthur could see what was going to happen before he really had time to react to the threat upon his life, certain that these thoughts of remorse would be his last.

His body was thrust forward as he felt a strong force meet his back, not quite a hand pushing him to the ground but more like two paws placed firmly on his shoulders as they lifted from the ground. Mystery himself had jumped with paws outstretched, pushing with all of his might to make sure his companion was able to duck in time to avoid the sword waiting for him in the echoing hallway. Vivi too was flung into the air, falling over the sword rather than beneath it as she rolled back onto the ground, landing sorely but safe. Again, if she hadn't been so preoccupied with her Olympic's sprint down the hallway, she would have no doubt noticed the hands of the ghosts lifting and throwing her into the air so that she might miss the sword and stay alive, but she was still too busy thinking her life was in danger to notice that the mansion was holding her in safe hands.

Mystery wasn't so safe however, and as the stunned Vivi sat forward with a hand lifted beneath her chin and the sore Arthur rubbed his rug burns gingerly from their spots on the floor, they noticed that their dog was lacking a head but still moving about just as a chicken might as he prepared to become Sunday brunch. Vivi lifted her hand to cover her mouth as she began to mourn for her beloved pet and mascot while Arthur, who was too filled with terror to really do anything of use, merely flinched as he always did, but lucky for them Mystery seemed to have a second head which popped up to replace his lost one without any damage or gore. The two might have questioned something as crazy as this on any normal occasion, but there was still too much preparing to kill them for the three to take their eyes off of the mansion if even for a second.

They swung around as the portraits surrounding them began to sing, the same voices of the ghosts rising from the frames of finely dressed young men and woman. Unfortunately for the portraits, their three victims weren't quite lined up in the position necessary to go through with their little stunt, and so again the ghosts of the mansion leapt forward to scream at the three intruders with wicked smiles and steady yet high vocals reaching into and echoing off of the walls.

Arthur and Mystery jumped simultaneously into Vivi's arms, gripping the girl for dear sweet life as the ghosts retreated back into their portraits, satisfied with their work. Vivi watched a string swing from the ceiling in front of a particularly fancy young woman, and it wasn't too hard for her to infer what was coming as the gloved hand reached out to grab it from the confines of her frame. Her eyes glanced down, and Vivi found that there was nothing beneath her feet safe a wide open cavern that was surprisingly well lit but no less deep.

This was it, she thought, the day that she died was upon her. The three would fall to their death with nothing more than a scream and then silence to mark their leaving this world. Maybe, she thought, she should've listened to Arthur for once and stayed in the van to wait for a passing truck or two; instead, her little family was going to end up dead and it was all her fault. She didn't want to die, but somehow she accepted it.

With that little cry of thought, Lewis woke up.


	14. Nearly Distant

Chapter 14: Nearly Distant

Through the faded portrait and mirrors of the ghostly mansion he called home, Lewis could see everything within his little territory. Be it the Dead Beats humming their little tunes or a wayward fly come to say hello to the dark house, he viewed all like a king overlooking his castle with a sense of quiet pride and watchfulness, a duty to those who were dutiful to him. Though his view was limited to one portal at a time his view from each was more extensive than the average view of a human unless, of course, blocked by one of his singing caregivers. As he rose from slumber today, he glanced lazily through the portals like a dusty deck of cards, pausing to gaze through the eyes of a young lady in the main hall. His ghosts milled about in some sort of confusion with their song sung loud and proud through their tiny mouths; something a little different from what they usually proclaimed, but still familiar in tune.

What had risen him so quickly from his sleep like death? Even if he never ran out of energy due to lack of slumber, he did still enjoy the confines of his coffin enough to rest for hours upon end, often allowing himself the very human experience as a way to pass time along with comfort and ground himself. As he had dreamt the horrific dreams of a phantom in sleep, Lewis had felt in his heart a shot of fear run through his safe haven, his home. There was something amiss in the quiet and calm that he had isolated himself within, something very close to home.

And then he remembered, in a flash of light, the moment he had heard the song of the Dead Beats first and only.

Still within his coffin, Lewis lifted his hands to rub the smoothness of his skull. Once before had they ever repeated the song they sang now with such energy and excitement, only once before had they let their voices ring as clearly as they did now, only once before had his Dead Beats graced the gentle ears of the phantom with a song of honey grace. Back then, they had only hummed the syllable with the restraint of tiny gods, allowing it to drip from their comb lips but only just so. His little orange heart was beating with the rapidness of a scared bunny. Were they really, truly warning him of his beloved's arrival, or were they simply taking a casual and confused stroll down memory lane?

He let his eyes flash through the portals, across portraits and peepholes, searching frantically for a flash of blue among the light and dark purple surrounding him. With every bit of his glass heart he willed her to appear before him, the one he had waited his own eternity for glowing with a mystery as she gazed upon the mansion he had made for her as she was filled with stars and galaxies. He didn't even know how much time had gone by-would she look the same?-but he knew he had to find her, had to speak to her, had to tell her how he truly felt in order to truly feel at peace.

Instead of her bright blue eyes dotted with light and shivering lips muttering secrets, Lewis' eyes through the mirror found the noticeably bright orange of a reflective and puffy vest, mid-fall with arms held above his head and scream resounding through the deep cavern. He flashed by quickly, pitifully wailing and commanding all of Lewis' attention before the phantom could fully absorb the scene in front of him or notice the companions by the ginger's side. The expectations of love within his heart shattered at his feet, replaced with such an enveloping hatred that the young ghost felt his fists clench into tight balls.

_Bring him to me._

He could feel the Dead Beats jump eagerly upon his command, so few and far between that they eagerly attempted to serve. Stirring the air around them with control and focus they awakened from their wandering state with eyes wide open. The view from the mirror was willed away in disgust, no longer of use to the vengeful spirit holding his own within the intricate coffin, and Lewis closed his eyes thoughtfully. Had he merely imagined her presence within the home he watched so closely? Since awakening from the oil-thick darkness with which he fell into after death, he had fantasized about both holding Vivi to his beating glass heart and strangling Arthur between his plated hands, but it was clear to him in every sense which one he desired the most: before he was a creature of hate, he had once been an angel of love.

Lewis had been lonely in this state of solitude. The Dead Beats were very good at caring for his every need, but you couldn't play Smash Bros. or talk about your feelings with bedsheets. Much of Lewis' afterlife had been spent cooking mindlessly to maintain his culinary abilities, but without the ability to digest or enjoy food as he once had he grew tired of his endless refrigerator. The time he spent away from the stove he felt was best used within his mind, and with only his thoughts he had let many days pass by with no more than a sideways glance. All that time, the entirety of two years, had been spent visualizing the reunion of his beloved and the murder of the one who had so suddenly taken him from her. With his eyes still closed, Lewis willed his coffin slowly open.

His room spread out before him as he lifted his head and opened his eyes, glancing only briefly at Arthur as he felt his heart of hearts question his dire thoughts. A hand lifted to protectively cup the beating orange symbol between his fingers with the timidity of a shy lover. He had seen this exact moment play out before him so many times before this, he could practically recite every speech he had ever pondered without pause or thought; now, with her still on his mind, he had to question the actions he felt his body so quickly rise to perform.

How would she feel? Arthur had been her best friend many years before she even knew of Lewis' existence: they had shared everything together and experienced so many ups and downs. If he went through with this and killed Arthur, there was the possibility that Vivi would not only grow immensely depressed with the loss of her best friend, but that, upon discovering Lewis' treachery, she would downright abandon him without second thought. Everything about the girl screamed loyalty and fairness, and in every action he had seen before his demise she had proven to Lewis that she was as devoted to her friends as a guard dog. He began to second guess his decision, wondering whether he should spare the life of the one who ended his to keep a smile upon the face of the one he loved so dearly.

The flames of betrayal wrapped around him once more, pushing away any thoughts of doubt that crept into the thoughtful folds of his undead brain. His brow knitted angrily before he turned smoothly back to the animal in front of him, the worm with which he would crush beneath his heels. Before him was a monster, the reason he was so alone in the middle of the woods, the one who had banished him without sentence from a life filled with light to one made entirely of pain.

It didn't matter. Arthur would die, and Lewis would finally find his peace.

He floated down from his coffin, lifting himself into the air with the grace of a floating ballerina upon a darkened stage. His hollowed eyes bore holes into the sockets of the man in front of him, his ginger head lifting as he noticed the phantom in front of him approach without noise but brimming with presence. Nothing in Arthur's surprised expression denoted even a droplet of recognition, but Lewis didn't seem to care as his feet clacked nearly noiselessly on the thin rug covering the wooden floor below. Any pain he had once felt had been replaced by an icy-hot betrayal, and all Lewis wanted was revenge.

"Glad you could drop in, Arthur. I've been dying to see you, you know." his voice roamed through the room, bouncing off of the walls menacingly and echoing throughout the halls and past the unlit candles loudly. After years of neglect, the resounding speech of the phantom had grown distorted and was in itself a cavernous cry, hardly audible as it repeated upon itself, layered with backward feedback and ominous with its inhuman tones. If Lewis had ever been human, the evidence had been left behind upon a sharpened stalagmite in a cave beneath the mansion.

Arthur was shaking, his eyes growing wider and wider as he attempted to speak back, "M-me? You got the wrong idea, skele-head. I've, uh, never seen you in my life b-before. Nope. Never."

Lewis could feel his emotions flare with Arthur's gasoline, climbing higher into the room as the skeleton seemed to swell into life. His victim had frozen in the stare of the enemy, clearly terrified as the ghost inhaled deeply with words beating upon his skull. It took all of his control to keep from jumping the gun and outright slaughtering the weasel here and now, "Oh, you don't remember me? I did take quite the plunge for you. It's such a shame you can't recall."

His prey was smiling guiltily now. Everything about him was clueless, and Lewis had to wonder whether he truly remembered his former team mate or if he was just trying to appear ignorant in some hope that he would survive the encounter by denying the truth laid out in front of him, "See, I've hunted so many ghosts in my lifetime, I'm sure I've just, uh, slipped your name or something. I should really get going, you know, I have a...uh..."

Lewis snickered, pouting as best he could with only his voice and eyes to express his fabricated sadness and sympathy for the trembling coward sitting so vulnerably in front of him, "I guess it's hard to remember everyone when time flies so fast, and you don't seem too sharp. Too bad I didn't fly when you pushed me to my death." Lewis lifted his hand as his voice filled the room even more, swelling and bursting as his finger pointed forward and directly at the man who denied him so vehemently. Lewis had watched him with a memory so clear, smile wicked and arm outstretched with the greenness and wickedness of jealousy as he fell from the cliff and toward the reaching stalagmites below. Arthur would pay for his actions.

"No, look, you got the wrong guy, I would never-"

"You still feign ignorance, must I sharpen you up? I hate this death, I hate this loneliness, but you..." Lewis lowered his head and eyes with rage, still maintaining eye contact as his finger continued to point at the destroyer of his dreams, "Fuck, it's you I hate the most."

Arthur lifted his metallic hand to point directly at himself, not taking his enormous eyes off of the one who threatened him with such abhorrence as sweat jumped quickly to run down his brow. Lewis, eyes now closed but presence felt in its entirety, felt all the unused energy of the years he spent wasting away fill his hollow bones, rising and crackling as the saucers upon Arthur's face kept growing in size. Tension sparked in the air around them, popping almost exclusively from Lewis' side of the room and sending embers to fly between the eyes of the murderer and the vengeful spirit that had waited so long to confront him. There was nothing in Lewis' life that had been so thrilling, so exhilarating as the sight of his betrayer between his mighty claws, and yet without remembrance upon his face something was lost; if the guilty felt himself innocent, the execution was no more than manslaughter. Did he seriously not remember the companion he had killed in cold blood, the friend he had left to fall to a gruesome death beneath his feet? No, the coward had to have remembered...

Maybe he just needed a little reminder.

"So you don't remember, you claim. How about I give you a little push in the right direction?"

His eyes jumped open, no longer hollow but filled with a circle of white-pink light in each socket as his voice began to grow silent with vile. Arthur gulped as he anticipated what was to come, watching with hyper-awareness as the bone-plated gloves of the phantom before him clenched tightly. A creeping venom was absorbing the voice of the mansion's spirit and enveloping the room, commanding an unknown force into willful action, crying out to the powers that stood guard to give heed to the master of the house. Just as the coward had seen in the main hall with candles only a fraction of the size, the four large torches surrounding Lewis began to burst into life one by one, burning him up with magenta light and gripping the scene with terrifying ambiance. Lewis lifted his head defiantly, challenging Arthur's memory with a simple swish of air and phantasmic power.

His skeletal head was engulfed in its own flame as a bright pink pompadour found safety above his brow. Arthur's confusion was filled with the remorse of remembrance and recognition.

"Do you remember me now, Arthur? Or did you truly think I disappeared for good? I have waited my own eternity to watch you suffer and die by my hand. Tonight, my dreams will finally become reality."

* * *

"Ouch. Okay, that wasn't very pleasant, but at least we're alive."

After falling for what had seemed like an eternity, Vivi and Mystery had fallen hard upon the old and faded tile floor, landing with their cheeks to the cold and sleek ground beneath and heads still stuck in the cavern above. While falling, neither had seen a way to escape the inevitable death that rose up to meet them, but as Arthur dropped into the abyss beneath them and the two were met by hard ground to absorb their infinite fall, things were starting to look up. Here they were, alive and without injury save for a few bumps.

The dog, clearly unphased by what had just been a plunge into the pit of eternity, was sniffing the air warily. He was sidetracked by something smelly surrounding them, beckoning to the little black button on his snout with the aroma of something familiar just as the entire house had felt. The girl tussled the ocean atop her head, windblown and unruly as it roared against her taming hands before they fell to gingerly rub the cramps and bruises screaming from her mid back, hoping they weren't anything worse. She was more than happy to be back on solid ground, but her body really wished she had landed somewhere softer or less painful, like a bouncy house or ball pit instead of the rock hard ground her back had so violently made contact with, "Where are we, anyway? This is still the same mansion I think, but I wouldn't have thought it would have an underground so deep down. Is that even possible, or is this just some kind of ghosty magic? And most of all, where's Arthur?"

Mystery wasn't listening very well, his nose leading him away from the mumbling girl and towards the counters where a few dirty rags, misplaced and somewhat odd looking compared to the beautifully clean kitchen around it, were waving to him from over the side of the marble. Only when she was alone with her dog did Vivi speak her pondering words louder than an inaudible whisper, knowing he'd never repeat the sidetracked and somewhat idiotic thoughts she muttered when excited. She herself was pacing around the open space, eyes flicking back and forth through the room in an attempt to absorb the memory as it rolled out in front of her.

It was clearly a kitchen, the tiles beneath her feet gray and faded white and the fridge like pearly snow while the cupboards contrasted with their boasting red wood, rising gracefully from the wall. The counters were a smooth marble, sleek as the floor beneath if a little faded from time and use, and by the looks of the appliances and enormous space granted to what is usually a small room, Vivi guessed that whoever called this place home was more than serious about the culinary arts. Almost as a branding, a little skeleton head hardly and darker or sleeker than the fridge itself was imprinted into the metal, and though the walls were still purple stripes everywhere else, the wallpaper between the counter and cupboards was a tiled gray like the ground beneath her feet. Save for the dirty rags, everything in the room was immaculate, and nothing denoted any form of paranormal activity to Vivi's disappointment.

Mystery gave one last sniff to the rag before it fell to the ground, landing with a soft 'plop'. He couldn't seem to find a trail, and so he left behind his dead end to investigate on his own for a little while. Vivi was brought back to attention as the dog nosed his way into the fridge, giving in to his canine instincts and searching for the food that beckoned from inside the shiny container. Her first thought was to scold him or pull him away, unsure of what they might find inside-who knew what ghosts eat?-but as she peeked around him, she found the refrigerator overflowing with what she assumed was totally normal, edible food. Everything from lunch meats to asparagus, cheese and steak, milk and some sort of weird purple fruit called to her from inside the cold fridge.

She couldn't help herself either.

"You know, maybe we shouldn't eat the ghost food. I mean, this doesn't sound very responsible or safe, and it's probably against some ancient unspoken rule in the ghost investigation community. Not to mention we totally ruined this gorgeous kitchen." she tried to persuade herself, but as she spoke her eyes never left the king of all sandwiches that rested in her hands. Vivi could feel herself begin to drool.

There was a pause as she waited for the dog to confirm her fears, taking a moment to glance at his equally obsessed face. As the seconds passed, she shrugged her shoulders with hardly a second thought and no more mind to the matter, looking back at the sandwich with greedy eyes.

"You're right, I shouldn't think about it. We must live for the moment! Not to mention the food replenishes immediately. I don't think anyone would care. Bon appetit?"

Both opened their mouths wide to inhale the meal in front of them, absolutely starving after over a day without any sustenance of any sort and thinking only of the plates piled high in front of them. It was unreasonable to assume that they could actually eat it all, but hunger makes the stomach greedy and without Arthur to warn them against the number of problems with their actions, they were more than eager to absorb the landmass in front of them.

She thought she heard something from in front of her, something loud and quickly approaching. There was some sort of pounding and possibly screaming, but Vivi was too close to this sandwich to care; her eyes were closed as she anticipated ecstasy with the knowledge that this was going to be the best mega-sandwich ever. She could taste it now, the music upon her taste buds whirling a daring dance between her teeth and down her throat. It was a slow motion movie scene to her, nothing but silence and a gradually closing rift separating her from her true love and savior of her stomach. Just a little more...

Something flew past her, nearly knocking the girl and sandwich aside as it pushed through the kitchen in some sort of frantic hurry. Her eyes whipped open, leaving her beloved to glance back at the orange blur that ran so quickly and frantically past her and into the hallway behind the kitchen. It wasn't too hard to guess who the blob of cowardly orange might be, but what was Arthur running so furiously from when his best friend, someone he knew could and would protect him, was right in front of him? She could hear a low growl coming from Mystery in front of her, and when she turned back to look at the dog and her sandwich, she was met by Arthur's towering reason for fear.

Barreling forward lightly on his floating, fire-clad feet and glaring after the ginger with hatred lighting his white-hot, pink eyes, a terrible skeleton-phantom was fast approaching with his hands lifted menacingly and arms reaching forward

Vivi's only thoughts were for her friend.

She dropped the sandwich without a second glance as she turned on her heels and chased Arthur with worry giving her feet speed. Her voice cried out his name loudly and with worry tingeing the edges as she began searching the hallway for some way to escape and keep them both safe, but the pounding of her heart was much too loud for her trembling thoughts, and so she sprinted entirely on faith in her instincts. Mystery was hot on her heels, paws pounding beside her as they kept pace but never surpassed her own in a show of loyalty. They stayed in front of the ghost behind them, but only barely, and as Vivi was struck by confusion and worried her dog stared straight ahead with determination pulling them both forward.

Arthur was slowing down a bit, his eyes meeting and shying away from the singing pink spirits from earlier as they poked their heads out of the doors lining the hallway before them. Vivi could feel deep down that they were the safe ones, that though they meant to spook they never meant to harm the three intruders, and that all in all they were much less dangerous than the raging ghoul behind them. Without losing pace, she grabbed her friend by his good arm to pull him past the humming of the choir that followed their steady progress, "Come on, Arthur, we need to get out of here!"

She pulled him into one of the rooms unoccupied by the ghosts, feeling her body leap forward as she stepped out and back into the hallway, four doors down from where they originally entered. Her mind immediately made the connection-she had watched enough episodes of Scooby Doo to remember the famous and overused chase scene, and as the skele-ghost came running in behind them, she pushed through another door across the hallway without slowing pace. Her voice called back for the team to split up despite the urge not to, hoping that the ghost would leave or become confused if they weren't all grouped together like they were now. It would be harder to keep track of three running mice rather than one big rat.

As they disconnected from each other, Vivi could see the phantom grow just the slightest bit disoriented. All three came through different doors at different times, but he only paused briefly before continuing to follow Arthur with a new determination filling his eyes-maybe that hadn't been the best idea.

The pace quickened as each began to grow frantic in their steps, and though she was more than out of breath she continued to run with the ghost appearing closer and closer to her and her friends. There was something new in her heat, and though she had never feared a ghost investigation before in her life, there was something different from her usual wonder and excitement filling her body. She could only imagine that, this time around, she truly feared the outcome of this hunt and the effect it might have on her friends.

They had been working their way quickly down the hall, ending up closer and closer to the end with every jump. By some stroke of luck or chance, the three ended up regrouping just as the ghost appeared before them in a flurry of sparking flames and angry fire. He pushed open the door, facing Arthur directly with Vivi and Mystery hidden behind him as their host rose up to intimidating heights with hands lifted. His henchmen, still singing so lightly and with voices trembling slightly, cried out in their high-pitched crescendos as the dark shadow emerged from the darkness and continued to rise further above them, hearts in throats as they turned tail and ran back the way they came. They continued through the maze with dizzying speed, and it wasn't until they reached the end of the hallway that they finally made use of the door out, entering into a new hallway framed with portraits that none of them took time to gawk at.

Mystery, panting heavily, was left behind as something caught his eye in one of the portrait, and with a little yelp Vivi looked back with the intention of scooping her pet into her arms before he was consumed by the foot flames of the ghoul. To her surprise, the master of the house did not even glance to the dog at his feet with his eyes so steadily rested on Arthur, continuing after the coward with increasing speed. She caught a bit of a better glance of the predator while still running, his fiery hair glowing pink and his suit finely made and ironed, as though he had been expecting and anticipating this moment. Who was he, why did he hate Arthur so much, and why did he feel so familiar to her?

She fell on a bump in the rug, the ghost passing over her much like he had her dog as he made his way quickly towards her best friend. There was no mercy in the angrily knit eyes of the vengeful spirit, and something in this chase didn't feel right or fair. Only once had she ever witnessed a spirit so determined, and that was when they had locked onto their murderer with plans of revenge and, in the end, death. She knew, for a fact, that Arthur had never and would never kill a person, so why did their pursuer hate him so? Though her body screamed at her to burst back into a frantic run, Vivi took a few moments to observe the scene taking place in front of her with curiosity giving her faith in her friend's life. Even after standing back up with her back once again complaining painfully, she only walked very slowly towards the two as they confronted each other, met with a dead end as the wall stopped.

"You can't run forever, Arthur! You know your fate is definite, you know what you did, and you know how you will end: by my hand. Give up the ghost, there's nowhere you can turn in your final moments."

Arthur was rising against the wall behind him, pushing his body as far as it would go against the wallpaper. His hands and arms lifted along with his chin, pulling his head up and away from the ghoul before him without ever taking his eyes off of the glowing circles that bore holes through his skull. He was crying out in fear in pain, anticipating the horror to come. The ghost was picking up speed now, barreling towards Arthur with his intentions more than clear, the flames he planned to push upon his enemy rising from his feet and towards his hands like tamed lions roaring on command. In no way had Vivi fully absorbed what was happening, and it wasn't until she was sprinting once more that she realized that her body and mind had finally agreed on one thing.

"Stop it, now!"

She had leapt forward, arms thrown back like wings and her face turned, grimacing, to the side and away from the ghost in front of her. Every inch of her body was ready to take the flames for her best friend, prepared to throw her life away in an act of divine sacrifice for the one she had saved all those years ago as children. If the phantom before her wished to harm Arthur, he must break through the angel he had attracted and kept. It had been the last possible moment for her to act, the flames rising higher and higher as they prepared to launch towards the ginger without mercy, but something was holding them back now. Knowing that she was giving up her life for her only friend, knowing that he would live even if she didn't, was more than enough to give her closure and peace. Vivi instead of Arthur had given up the ghost, and all that was left for her was whatever pain came with burning alive.

"...Vivi?"

She opened her eyes slightly, not finding flames to cradle her corpse as her eyes opened but the retreating ghost before her. He had pulled back from his attack upon Arthur, his flames dispersing into the air around them as he blinked in confusion and worry, thoughts of what could have happened tearing his beating heart apart. What had once been a flare of impatient determination and hatred was replaced with something resembling a question, a beautiful yet unsatisfying sort of punctuation instead of the release she thought to be death as his revering eyes wondered why she would throw herself so quickly into death yet tinged with a touch of relief that he hadn't harmed her, hadn't brought the girl to her death. Her eyebrows raised in confusion as he landed lightly and without a sound onto the rug beneath their feet and began to approach, but the pounding of her heart was not of fear or fatigue but that of recognizing something dear to her as though he were something she knew, someone she had anticipated or even hoped for.

She heard him say something so softly, heard him speak in a low voice tinged with the paranormal noises so well known by any ghost investigator and crackling with the very human portrayal of anxiety and pain. She didn't understand his words, though, and she didn't absorb the proclamation in his words. Everything about him was so familiar, something dear to her sending a shot of pain through the heart so deep in her chest rather than the brain that often cried at her to forget. Every instinct in her body screamed that she was safe, that he was trustworthy, but as she felt Arthur reach forward with a trembling hand to grab her shoulder she remembered the unspeakable act that had nearly cost her the life of someone closer to her than a faded and broken memory.

Still, she felt some sort of pull toward the phantom before her, a red string of fate pulling her closer with every beat of his heart. He floated slowly towards her, and as they were connected that beating heart began to extend from its place near his chest, protected by rib and fabric. The ghost was quiet now, no longer trying to speak to her without the words to completely convey his surprise, his pain, his longing. Her hands had dropped to her side as she felt the tension disappear between her friend and her memory, the ghost no longer caring about his target and focusing only on her as his heart floated towards her. His eyes were soft and gentle as he stared deeply into her soul through the only windows she had, her own forgetful eyes. She broke away from his gaze by instinct to look at the beating orange symbol of life approaching her steadily, and her usually chattering mind fell completely and utterly into silence.

Her hands lifted up to cup the heart, pulling it even closer towards her chest as the ghost watched calmly, unmoving now as his life was transferred from his care to her own palms. Her fingers hovered like shy moths attracted to the rays of glowing light, feeling her own heart try to jump towards the ghoul through her throat. She could feel a certain heat radiating from the energy between her digits, waves of brilliance as though the sun were being held hostage in the cage of her fingers, nearly burning the skin on her hands with its intensity and vigor and forcing her to keep somewhat of a distance. It looked as though it were glass, so fragile and thin as it began to slow in front of her. She began to feel a tug of memories pulling at her tired and nearly restored brain, no longer a headache as she saw a shadow appear in the front of her mind, the ghost of a person phasing right there before her…

She yelped a little as she was quickly jerked aside, someone grabbing onto her arm and holding tight before she could reach the heart growing so near to her own, before she could fully and truly hold it in her hands and remember completely what was hidden so deeply within her mind. She looked quickly at her captor, a sprinting and screaming Arthur, before glancing back at the answer to her million questions, the holder and guardian of her lost memories. There was the one person who could truly tell her the full story concerning the life she didn't remember, the memories lost and protected by lock and chain, falling into the background and growing smaller with every footstep. Her hand lifted to reach back towards him as though she could still grab the heart left suspended in the air, still make it to him in time if only she reached far enough.

And his eyes, so sad and filled with anguish and regret. He too reached for his dreams as they were pulled away from him for a second time, the sands of fate rushing through his fingers leaving only grains of mourning and grief, watching everything he had ever waited for disappearing into the hallways he had constructed for her. These halls of hell he called home, these mazes of anguish, crowded with loneliness and lost chances as they danced so prettily yet left him to stand on the sidelines. It didn't even occur to him, so immersed in her fading figure, that he was leaving something very important to hang without tether in the air in front of him, his entire being held aloft by nothing more than the imprints of her reaching hands. With his own arm grabbing for her still, his beating orange heart fell to the floor, and all was silent save the echoing boom of glass shattering upon wood like a gong.

Blue is the color of sorrow, blue is the color of regret, and blue is the color of Vivi. Now, blue is the color of his heart upon the unforgiving ground, cracks running along the surface like rivers of tears against his cheekbones as it gave one last sigh of life and allowed the living fire to escape from its container. He lowered his eyes, feeling the realest pain he had ever experienced in his unlife before falling totally and utterly hollow, just as his locket had in front of him. All of his life had been contained in that tiny bit of glass, and as it faded to nothing more than an empty shell so did he.

The Dead Beats were meant to protect him, keep him safe, tend to his each and every need with their songs keeping his heart beating in time; now, with the quickness of flustered nurses, they hurried to keep their patient alive. He fell under the control of the powers within the house, losing himself to the pink light that absorbed his soul and kept him floating along in the darkness without fading. The pain he felt was only very temporary, and as he felt the urge to act upon his debilitating sadness, his caretakers took matters-and his mind and body-into their own hands. Eyes stained the same pink as their bedsheet bodies, Lewis was plunged into that oil-thick darkness once again by the will of his ghosts.

Vivi, Arthur, and Mystery, on the other hand, had been marked as threats. As dutiful as ever and only with their master's wellbeing in mind, the Mystery Skulls felt the fire they had all so narrowly avoided burst behind them from the currently possessed Lewis With flames licking at their heels, the mansion gave them an exit, and without second thought the three had left their nightmare behind.


	15. White Lies

Chapter 15: White Lies

He had lost control.

Lewis had lost control of himself, and now she'd never be coming back.

He was watching her fade away from him so fast and with such quickness, his eyes dull once more and lacking their light as they followed the van through the darkness on their way to their next motel, their next adventure, somewhere far away from where he was to never again look back upon their former team mate. He knew he'd always be looking back from this day until he truly faded from her realm, looking back and regretting his rash and childish actions and wondering if it could have ended differently for him and the girl dressed up like the sky, wondering if he could have been holding his ocean in his arms right now with her living breath warm against his empty chest and his fingers knotted so lively in her hair, never leaving her morning curls with the bone plates catching on the rivers running from her head. He wondered if, just maybe, they could have gone back to life the way it as or started a new one on their own, truly lived even if he would never be the same.

That wasn't possible now. She was gone forever, and there was nothing more he could do.

His eyes lowered and his plated hands lifted, holding between the bone digits the heart that only moments before had been animated with the beating and fullness of life and hope, fire and passion. Now, he was no more than a husk thrown aside by careless fingers, an empty glass with too many cracks to hold slowly running water let alone fickle flame. With his lifeline gone flat and his tether wavering and fraying, Lewis felt himself growing faint and somewhat dizzy. If he had a truly beating heart at that moment, it might have fluttered like a baby bird within his chest as he felt himself beginning to fade away.

His hand twitched lightly, gripping the locket harder for only a second before allowing it to swing satisfyingly open to pour the light from his inner core and true self outward in a wave, the brightness only truly tangible to him within his dark room and even darker, brooding heart. She was smiling so happily from within, her joy that of the entire world as it rested within her hands and upon her face as her fingers gripped his without shy restraint or further thought, only unbridled and free roaming cheer. The eyes of his former self, so purple and bright with the blessings of light, gazed only upon her pale face with gentle wrinkles shaping the sides and adoration evident in their shining proclamation. Even in death, some things never change.

She had been so close, no longer a dream or a memory but the screaming reality come to break his heart for a second time within the halls of his home. He had been so close to seeing that smile curling her cheeks and squinting her eyes, so close to cupping her face in his deathly hands and feeling her warm skin so lively as it blushed a shy crimson, so close to telling her in his hushed tones what he had never had the nerve to tell her when he truly had the breath. He had fallen once so painfully to the hands of a loved one, finding himself powerless as his arms reached in vain towards the one he named more than an ally or travel companion, but a friend and a teammate. The second time, he had been pushed into the infinity of despair with his arms still reaching in a futile attempt to catch himself and finding hers reaching too, finding their hearts and hands separated as he cried out for his best friend, his family, and his beloved.

A tear streaked down his bony face, startling him in its warmth and livelihood as he lifted a timid hand to brush it aside and away as he felt himself shiver with the release of tension, the release of emotion through his numb body. He was growing even more emotional, and as his hand neared his face, he noticed its pinkness, no longer black and bone-plated but nearly living if a little faded and shaking. This was it, then? Was he going to fade into the next life not as a phantom but as the ghost of who he truly had been in a life he had left behind and who had in turn abandoned him, the life that had left him forgotten? If anything were going to save him, if he was going to stay in the land of the living for any longer than a few more torturous hours, something had to happen fast to tether him back into this world.

Be it sorrow or an attempt to conserve what little energy he had left within his frail body, Lewis let the mansion he had made so thoughtfully for Vivi fade into the nothingness he had been born from. He couldn't stand to look at it anymore, couldn't stand the reminder that she wasn't with him right now and that she never would be, forever out of his reach if forever within his mind. If these were his last moments, he decided they were best spent in whatever remnants of false peace he could manage.

* * *

Her hands were pressed numbly against the large cold window in the back of the van, breath fogging the structure chill as ice and leaving clouds of mist in pulses as she inhaled and exhaled rhythmically, the translucent surface obscuring her glassy view. All the way back down the road they came, the black thorns of the crooked forest curled around the house fluidly and very much alive as the mansion decayed, and with a little sigh like death she watched the shadow of her mind fade into nothingness, becoming no more than a muddy imprint upon the swamp within her mind and a flicker of lost hope. As it disappeared, the little, beating heart inside her chest gave a flutter of worried and sorrowful goodbye, and she had to pull her hand gently to her breast to stop the tears from filling her stinging eyes.

That ghost had chased Arthur through a mansion of immense size, height, and mystery, the look in his eyes screaming nothing short of blood vengeance and merciless justice stained by hatred, maybe even betrayal. He had threatened without word or breath the only person she truly felt a connection with, the only person she could call her best friend and brother, someone she was willing to take a bullet-even die-for in every sense of the term...and yet, such fondness gripped her with vines of remembrance when he stopped before her, such wonder filled her beating heart like helium as his eyes locked onto hers with the searchings of the soul, and just thinking about the way her stomach filled with laughing air and effortless lightness as his heart offered itself to her, so trusting and full of love and locked secrets. She knew him, she had been so close to a tangible memory. She knew him and she had loved him, maybe even as much as she loved Arthur.

That little tug of swelling frustration began to burrow into her unruly brain, anger that she couldn't remember filling her limbs. The spirit of the mansion within the black, curling thorns...he had been someone close to her, someone who had kept her wholly safe in times of fear and terror beyond current recollection, this she knew with certainty. He was someone who could and had once filled the tiny void within her still beating heart, and yet without any hint of recognition she couldn't paint a picture, couldn't hear his voice, couldn't see the phantom of her angelic heart for what he truly had once been. Her sorrow, biting with raised hackles against the frustration of earlier, was chased out entirely by his big brother discontent, no longer snarling but screaming as it berated Vivi for her inactions and inabilities. In bitter reply, she felt her nails dig deeply into the palms of her hands, and she turned quickly to Arthur with a burst of daring and a desire beyond anything.

"Arthur, who was he?"

As she studied the events of the night over and over in her head with careful accuracy and attention to every little detail, she saw her best friend's face not just that of fear and terror as it almost always had been in these situations. No, much more had been evident in the curving of his eyebrows, the speed of his motion, the moments of silence and reflection as her best friend faced what could have and should have been his death; Vivi had seen recognition in the sinking of his eyes, she had seen guilt in the pleading of his deep cheeks, she could see regret in the screams that painted the purple hallways blood red. There was once a time where he never lied to her, never kept a secret and physically couldn't as excitement and the thrill of revelation possessed his body, but there was more to this mystery than just a coward and an angry ghost. Too many shadows had accumulated between her and her best friend, and how can you truly trust someone when they don't bestow trust upon you?

Arthur didn't acknowledge hearing her question let alone understand, not even turning back or flinching as she waited for some form of reply, be it vocal or physical. His metal hand, always a lot stronger than his right, gripped the steering wheel harder and harder with each passing second and left dents in the pliable and soft black crevices and dips in the fabric. He was guilty now, she could feel it as though it were a strong pulse rolling off of him, growing in intensity as he kept his eyes on the road and head from turning to even look at her. This only furthered her intuitive suspicion, and she could feel her usually calm head growing light with some form of angry betrayal, something akin to a stab in the back. This wasn't right, her not knowing so much about herself and their past. Why did he continue to lie to her, keep something so important from her, if he truly valued their friendship?

She heard a muffled noise from the front seat, a little murmur or crackle in his voice as though he was trying his very best to control himself and nearly losing to the temptation of honesty and truthfulness. Mystery looked up at him with eyes flashing a glinting red, his gaze stern and commanding as he let off the tiniest of growls as a warning to the ginger-headed boy-did her _dog _seriously know more about this mystery than she did? Even the thought of being left so in the dark gave her a flare of agitated air, and as cruel courage gave her voice a resonance she felt herself fall into an emotion she hated more than the death that came with silence.

"God damn it, Arthur, talk to me! Who was the ghost who wanted your head on a stick, why did he feel so...so safe to me, but most of all," she took a gulping breath, her eyes landing precisely on her friend as her voice cracked with a fury unknown to her mild temper, "what happened the night you lost your arm? What happened the night I lost my memory? What happened, and what does it have to do with him?"

Silence.

She could feel her outburst fading and her control coming back gradually like shy mice to an outstretched bread crumb, but with this awareness and control came the crying of guilt in the back of her mind, the regret of actions so dire and quick she couldn't quite think them through with tact. Arthur was hunched over the steering wheel as though he had collapsed from the impact of her words and accusations, his shoulders shaking and exhaustion driving the boy to bitter tears and memories only fueling his fear of the dark of the future. He began to mumble something, his voice no louder than a broken wisp of wind in the silence of the car upon the back road streets. She leaned in to lend her ear to the musings of the boy with the voice as loud as a leaf falling upon the autumn ground, hoping to catch an inkling of his words before he once again fell silent, but with a loud inhale of breath he lifted himself back up and cleared his crackling voice of any wavering emotion that might leak through with the most monotone and broken of replies falling from his heavy lips. If she weren't so blind with desire, Vivi would have no doubt felt her little heart sink to the floor.

"Vivi, he didn't want you to know back then. _I _didn't want you to know. This is how it is, this is how it should be."

Again, the screaming of silence. Not even the tires against the road below made enough noise to cover the awkwardness, and stewing of unwanted thoughts and feelings in the van, falling near silent as though they too were mourning for the man of her faded memories. She leaned back against the bouncing of the couch behind her, feeling her eyes grow tired and weary with the promise of tears and the threat of sobs. Vivi was sick of not knowing her fate, and in this way she only grew even more rebellious and bitter.

Her eyes, nearly closed as the road gave a little bump of life on the neglected and dead street, locked onto something hidden only inches from her feet with only her own curiosity and an inkling of remembered usefulness to mark it as anything less than lies and marketed ghost crap. Salvation for Vivi was kept sealed and safe within a cardboard box, frayed and old at the edges and labelled with blurred and unrecognizable sharpie. She reached forward with hands growing greedy and desperate, careless and quick, allowing her chubby fingers to curl around the thin and brittle binding that left the pages frayed and old. She had pushed it away forever ago to gather and collect dust, but as she brushed it off it was a treasure trove she couldn't believe she left behind almost two years ago. There was something about this book she remembered, something within its yellowing pages smelling only of mildew and age, that she had taken note of for future reference. This was her divine intervention, her salvation, and within it she knew she would find the means to her memories.

"We're going to a motel. Separate rooms."

Vivi, so lost in her memories, felt herself jump as Arthur's voice cracked and sputtered with the usage of words he never thought he'd speak, something he never _wanted _to speak. He sounded lost and broken as he interrupted her thoughts with unpleasantness, the news unwanted and cold to the girl who seeked warmth and comfort. After such a scare on his life, despite her anger at his silence, there was nothing that Vivi needed more than the reassurance that came with the two of them sleeping in the same room if even in different beds, the knowledge that he was safe beside her and that his every movement was hers to gauge and analyze, the memories of sleepovers and camping trips and good times past between the two of them. Her mouth opened to argue selfishly, but she closed it slowly as she felt her heart sink a little further.

If he was going to push her away like this, she guessed that's what he had to do.

They pulled into the broken parking lot of some motel she had never seen before tonight, completely average in every aspect-grey in color, square in shape, somewhat kept gardening-and tiny enough to fit into the small town without shouting too loud from its little corner in the back. Vivi and Arthur both took no time to gawk at the overall blah scenery around them or to even look around, both opening and slamming their doors to leave their homey van behind without any hesitation or second thought. Gripped close to her breast, Vivi held the mysterious book she placed so much faith in with the tenderness of a butterfly's kiss while Arthur, eyes turned down and body slouched against the subtle wind, held nothing but regret and hatred towards the position he had maintained in order to protect Vivi from his mistakes. There was nothing he wanted more than to turn tail and run, but with nowhere to sprint to, he merely followed his best friend as her heart grew bitter.

She hurried ahead with the tiny heels of her shoes resounding loudly off of the street beneath, the wind screaming at the two as she left the boy and dog behind in the middle of a parking lot somewhere close to nowhere. Her voice shook when she walked into the lobby with the order of two rooms, each separate from each other as far as she could manage as if distance would make a difference. When Arthur finally did catch up to retrieve his key from the horribly dyed blond woman at the counter, his companion had disappeared somewhere into the maze of wooden doors and chipped paint. He really didn't have the heart to find her without anything to truly say except a cold and broken 'sorry,' and so he took the dog and the heavy key that only grew in weight with every leaden step with his head hanging low, walking away from her and towards a very lonely night.

Vivi didn't have much to look forward to, either, and as she closed the door loudly to her room and let out a broken, frustrated, and pitiful sigh she could feel the book weighing heavily on her hands and conscious with the promise of an adventure. This was the first time since she had woken up in the hospital nearly two years ago that she had been forced to sleep alone and without Arthur, and as she lifted her hands to run her stout fingers through her sweaty hair, she forced herself to keep the lump in her throat down as best she could. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, the Mystery Skulls: ghost hunting was fun, it was an adventure and a journey, and it was suppose to bring her and Arthur closer together, not further apart.

She collapsed onto the bed with a dull 'thud,' hitting her bruised and battered back against the cushy mattress with a little bit of discomfort and pain. She lifted the book over her head, arms stretched and locked as she prepared for quite the read that night. In trying to take her mind off of her best friend, she began to flip through the pages idly and without hurry, hoping dearly that she had grabbed the right tome from the cardboard box she had once worshipped. Just as she had remembered in a flash of color, the pages were filled much past their original print with the input of two mysterious voices, and the pages were folded and ripped with memories of reference and use throughout the years of the book's life. Even if her heart had dropped to the soles of her shoes through the course of the night, she had to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of a book read over and over again, a book full of stories well beyond the printed page.

The skimming fingers that tossed the pages like a whirlwind nearly skipped past her desired entry in their flurry of nail, freezing mid-turn in order to absorb what she had found in front of her eyes. Was this really it? Had she truly found the correct book? Her eyes read the title over and over as though it would morph before her eyes, not quite understanding what she had found. A summoning spell, a real life spell for summoning a ghost, and it was within her hands like the Sunday paper and no more! Her eyes burned into the print with laser precision and desire, pulling as much information as she could from the scratches and ink bled deeply into the yellowing and faded paper.

It was simple enough, requiring no ingredients that weren't easily found in a motel room. Vivi had been expecting using colored chalk to draw intricate patterns upon the floor as she spewed ancient words of a secret language with a goat heart grasped, bloody and writhing, in her open palms, assuming something drastic was to be done in order to pull to her the soul that haunted her from such a far distance, but instead, all that was required of her was a name written on each palm. She shook her head-that couldn't be right, there must be something more to this mysterious ritual-but she couldn't find anything within the black print that might point elsewhere. In one last attempt to find something missing, the crucial ingredient of virgin's blood or a first born child, she turned to the beautifully scrawled cursive with curiosity lighting her sunken eyes once more.

The cursive was intricately written, but it was in Spanish, a language she only knew the bare minimum of. Vivi could only assume that the purple handwriting below, a little messierbut very self conscious of its curling letters, was a translation of the small paragraph above.

_Works well for spirits of high and concentrated energy still held within this realm of existence. A fond heart and thick lines quicken summoning, but the tether is easily broken. Be cautious, as breaking the tether prematurely may permanently vanquish a soul into nothingness beyond the earthly and heavenly realms._

_BEWARE: allows spirits free reign of mind and home. Potentially dangerous. Use only with much caution and proper wards._

She read the flowing notes a few times over, attempting to fully understanding the words by scanning the lines with careful accuracy and focus. A fond heart and thick lines? Was this some sort of riddle, or was she just not getting it? Her mind pushed the thoughts to the back of her head, taking the passage at face value and storing it for later evaluation. The blue eyes inside her head skimmed lower, finding below the text more of the purple print that had been her translator earlier, but it was lacking the Spanish cursive it was translating in the first place.

_Simple spell, easy, but may potentially lead to possession. Use only if higher spells are unavailable or irrational._

With that input, she now looked at her choices with a torn and chattering heart. On one hand, she could summon a potentially dangerous and definitely deadly, vengeful spirit with a hankering for revenge and a love for the bursting of flames into a small, confined motel room in a tiny town that would probably burn to the ground before the fire department was even notified, not to mention that he'd have wide open access to to possess her brain with which he could go after Arthur sleeping in the same motel, if across the lot. But then again, he had seemed so fond of her when he had paused to gaze into her eyes, his own softening gently at the corners, his voice rasping lightly with the chance of sobs sticking to the throat he no longer had physically, extending his heart so slowly and tenderly towards her with the hopes that her soft hands would catch and cradle it within their loving embrace.

She had let him down, and in that way Vivi felt she needed to apologize at least. His heart had shattered upon the floor because she wasn't fast enough, he deserved a sincere 'sorry' at least, and this was the only way she knew how.

It was clear in her mind that she needed, to the best of her ability, to call him to her. There were too many questions, too many things left unsaid in those seconds of utter silence, and if he had truly meant to kill her he had quite the chance to watch her burst into bright flame when she was spread out across Arthur with his fire barrelling at her with the ferocious speed of a brakeless freight train.

Her eyes lowered back to the text, now rested in the folds of her bright sweater with a new determination and curiosity welling up within her. She was committing to the spell, promising the ghost with all the certainty she could give that she would try at least to bring him to her; and yet, promising was a lot easier than actually going through with something. As she reread the instructions one more time and racked her brain relentlessly for the one important ingredient, the only knowledge asked, she realized she was missing such a simple and vital piece of the puzzle.

His name had escaped her years ago.

She cursed Arthur's silence under her breath, wishing he had at least let slip a remnant of the name of the mystery man who had taken hold of her thoughts so completely and entirely. It was on the tip of her tongue, two gentle syllables like a children's song rising in the back of her throat and tapping gently against her lips as if asking politely to be allowed its leave, but the prisonous confines of her teeth took those words for convicts and clenched them as her suffocating memory coraled them back to lay at peace in her vocal chords. It killed her inside, knowing she had him so close to her memory but no more than a whimper to leave her lips, nothing but an 'L' that died out so suddenly. Levi? Lucas? Leon?

None of them sounded right, nothing clicked within her mind like a key to a lock or metal to a mold, every single one of them sounding unfamiliar and strange to the tongue that searched so furiously for the song to complete the soft letter. Those names died out slowly with a gasping release of air, fizzling into nothing but a meaningless sound escaping her teeth. She looked at her hands, still trying out the names in her mind and under her breath as she observed her plump palms with tense brows leaving the imprint of a headache upon her mind.

It her her then in a flash of light, the symbol reaching for her eyes with the brightness of a blinding pink. If she couldn't find a name to give to her little mystery, she'd just have to use the next best things in the hopes that the point would be made, the connection soldered together, the reach completed with grasping hands whirling fingers into tight knots. The skeleton had been more than a name in this afterlife, he had been her memories and her safety...and he had been an exposed, beating heart, burning and flaming and flaring with every pulse that filled his mansion of mazes.

A symbol is just a name for the nameless, isn't it?

Her hands plunged into the infinity of her overnight bag, pulling from it a pencil pouch covered in tiny white ghosts filled with sharpies and highlighters of her own, just in case that boring little notepad of hers needed a splash of color among the long records of ghost hunts and clients. From its confines, she pulled the blue and orange and yellow markers with her hands trembling slightly and fingers curling around their smooth surfaces, fumbling with the cap and gripping the orange with her right hand to draw on her left weakly. This was it, if she had time to turn around, now was it.

The orange pen traced slowly a heart across her palm, large and thick enough to give the ink just a little bit of a glow underneath the dim light of the cheap motel lamps. She took care to round and soften the edges, giving it the gentle fire she had so loved within the eyes of her mystery, her phantom of the night. And then, on the right hand with her tongue bit in concentration and focus, she began to trace the blue lines of a cracked and hollow glass shell, what he had become when she had left him alone and without tender hands to catch his entire being, his whole world and soul within the glass upon the floor. These two things, the heart he so embodied, was the only chance she had at seeing him and redeeming her inactions.

As the instructions specified, she closed her eyes and pictured vividly in front of her the skull and bright pompadour, the glowing eyes and the deep black suit pulled from nothingness itself, ironed out and ready for a funeral with the protection of ribs wrapping around to grip his chest from the outside so tightly. He moved in her mind, his well built body turning towards her as his voice reached out to her, trying to grab for her as though he were calling from far away, as though he were fading from her. She could feel her hands lifting in reply, her shaky voice singing to herself in a muttered whisper, filled with the intense and burning pain of remembrance and reaching and grabbing and screaming. Her palms clapped together, she could feel the energy running through her veins with the electricity of childish excitement and a little bit of supernatural intervention. He was coming closer to her, walking her way with large steps upon the dark floor, approaching her with one hand outstretched calmly and lovingly with forgiveness shining in his bright eyes…

And just like that, it was over.

Her eyes flicked open with fluttering wings, glancing quickly from the bed and around the room in the hopes that he would be there waiting for her so patiently. The lump in her throat as she double checked confirmed her biting fears: she was totally and utterly alone in the motel room, just as she had been before and how she figured she would be for the rest of the night.

For some reason, she could feel herself growing immensely upset, stinging tears biting at the edge of her eyelids with salty regret. He meant so much to her this man of no return, yet he was worlds away and she couldn't find the faintest trail within herself to remember his fucking name, to pull him to her by any form of force. So clear in her head, nearly tangible to her stretching fingers and reaching voice was the bony plates that she could nearly feel against her skin, press against her face, but despite her efforts he was so far away now and it was all due to her lack of power and control. She looked down at her hands, digits tense and rigid as they curled into angry claws to mimic the ghost's ribs and protect the two hearts stained into her white skin, burn marks etched into her pigment with gentle care and longing that meant nothing to the powers that be. The tears in her eyes were piercing now, rolling down her cheeks in tiny cascades and leaving glowing pink trails in her skin that she had no way of seeing, no way of knowing.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She screamed, lifting her hands and gripping handfuls of the ocean between her fingers, pulling the roots in her head to the point past pain. If she had loved him so much, why couldn't she remember that one little detail of vocal recognition, his true face covered in blood and flesh, the way her tongue curled to call him towards her with laughter and fondness leaving every letter sticky as it left her candy lips? Was he truly more than a friend to her soul if she couldn't bring herself to certainty about his every characteristic, of had all of this passion been born of an illusion brought about by an overactive mind?

Vivi brought her hands hard to her face as her head began to throb, rubbing the plump palms into her sockets hard and without much thought beside the impulsiveness of angry actions. She began to see stars speckle the darkness of her closed eyelids, and the salt of her tears rubbed deeper felt like open cuts against her fragile lids. Over and over she repeated, whispering to herself in accusatory tones with a voice that was overflowing and flooding the room with desperation and anger, "why, why, why?" A sob escaped her lips as her heart sunk even further, a crack in the dam, and as she pressed the hearts as deep as she could to leave bright imprints upon her retinas she could feel the water flow and break the stone and cascade upon her in a river of broken and crackling downpours. She couldn't control herself anymore, and with the choking and ugly sniffling of someone who has lost near everything-even without the memories of ever losing it-she let herself fall into sorrow.

Yet again there was a sudden jolt of electricity triggered by the tears upon the thick hearts carried on her palms, something rushing through her thick veins with the intensity of a ravenous forest fire and the softness of the caressing wind that carries it from one tree to the next, leaving her not sore with exhaustion and heat but relaxed, comforted. It was as though, in this tiny and cold motel room filled with nothing but her resonating and confused sobs and an impending sense of loneliness, she was not alone but comforted by the love of something long lost to her, his arms wrapping around her within the cheap motel bed and pulling her to his chest as he slept and snored softly in an act of protection and reassurance, a show of brotherhood and innocent affection.

She felt something like eyes burning into her back with the evident worry and pureness of a mother, maybe a father or...a lover.

Her head whipped up, eyes red with the remnants of her outburst as she hiccuped and sputtered, but also glowing from the residue of the pink tear trails as they fell down her pale cheeks and into the hands that had been pulled away from her face in surprise. She was no longer in her motel room, no longer surrounded by the large comforter and the shade of a lonely night but surrounded by the radiating light of daytime, but most importantly, she was no longer desperately and utterly alone. In the middle of the room, she saw a dark shadow with eyes soft enough to sleep upon. Her phantom's voice, as he spoke quietly for fear of disrupting the calming silence, cracked with the anxiety of confused fear.

"...Vivi, what's wrong?"


	16. Alone Together

Chapter 16: Alone Together

Vivi stared in complete and utter silence.

She had once hated the lack of noise that followed her around like a bad omen, the hushed whispers of past memories hidden and the sympathetic glances from those she had known but forgotten to the telltale wind, but in this simple instant of lost and absolute wonder it came naturally to her ears. Once the silence had been threatening, deafening, the sound of death and loss and greed and destruction of the life around her. Now, in front ot the shadowed ghost who had left her wondering she felt no need for the frivolity of words, not waiting for sound to jump into her throat eagerly. Any questions pondered were lost upon her, and as the mystery before her took a very gentle and quiet step forward, she could feel the silence thicken and the biting tears well back into her eyes.

"Vivi, is it really you? What happened?"

He was reaching ever so slightly, a large hand lifting no further than his thin waist as he maintained the intimacy of eye contact with those same, worried sockets, his bare head no longer ablaze with the animation of pink flames but bald and smooth, his eyes darkened without their ring of unearthly light. He looked fatigued and faded, transparent almost, but all of his waning attention was diverted from his state of disrepair and focussed on his blue-haired angel.

How had she called him to her? When her hands had pulled apart and her eyes had opened up with fitful currents of salty regret after a first attempt, every little bit of hope had been lost to the bright young woman and she had simply given up on the phantom of her divine heart. Even if her tears stung and her head throbbed strongly with the sore remnants of the man long forgotten and lost, she couldn't help but convince herself that he was gone for good, forever, for the rest of her eternity. Now here he was, staring at her with unwavering focus through the darkness of his unlit eyes with the complexities of anxiety never leaving his bony face, and yet with this she could feel her entire body freeze in place as her palms grew sweaty and her skin shuddered in something akin to pleasure, anticipation, something very near to excitement. How had she called him to her with nothing more than the inking of a heart, how was he here?

She couldn't stand the intensity of his eyes any longer, couldn't stand all of the emotion running from them like dry waterfalls in the summer heat. Her eyes moved down to her hands resting lightly now on the bed, sheets blue and white to match her pale skin and so much different from the faded forest green of the motel just moments prior. The phantom followed her gaze loyally and true, looking at her sheets and then diverting his gaze to the room around him in a sudden rush of understanding. It was so white and pure, filled with the sharp scent of rubbing alcohol, and even if he lacked a mouth to frown Vivi could feel it. A wave of displeasure like a solar flare swept through the hospital room, a sense of guilt wrapping around the skeleton like a coffin to bury him six feet under.

There was a crackling to his voice, an open flame flickering in the darkness and wavering as it felt itself smothered by its own hand, "Vivi, you...you're not hurt, are you? Oh, god, what did I do? You aren't...I didn't...kill you, did I?" He was suddenly turned towards her without the memory that she held, without the knowledge that this was simply the bed and room she had woken up in after losing her memory to whatever that green cave had held for her and Arthur two years prior, the only place she truly remembered in full, "I'm so sorry, Vivi, I didn't want to explode like that, I swear it wasn't me in there, not truly. I would...I never wanted this, any of this at all. Oh, Vivi, please don't be dead…"

He reached out in full now, making to move towards the girl with heavy feet against the linoleum but stopping as she flinched back and away from him and further towards the edge of the bed in a subtle but heartbreaking attempt to get away from the phantom. His gaze fell, ashamed by his actions earlier that night and clearly pained as the one person he had waited to see most of all fell away from him as she always had. It hadn't been voluntary, simply a reflex as the spirit who had nearly killed her and her best friend approached so suddenly and quickly, and she could feel herself growing heavy with awkwardness and the bright spatterings of blush upon her embarrassed cheeks.

"Look, I'm fine. This isn't...I don't think I'm actually here, in a realistic sense. You didn't hurt me back there, not physically."

She could see him noticeably relax at her reassurance, his shoulders falling and his head tilting as he gave a ghostly sigh. He had stepped more into the natural light of the sun now for her to see, his suit darker than a moonless and his bones bright and glaring against their celestial rays as they wrapped around his chest and towards his unbeating heart. The blue glass was broken now, a long dark line running down the middle with the shattered glass noticeably chipped and the flame within mysteriously and sorrowfully gone. Something within her responded as though by instinct, and Vivi had to stop herself from reaching out to grab and kiss the heart she had so suddenly broken within that mansion, within his home, to bring back the little flickering light that she had held in her hands and let die to the fear of danger and the running of her cowardly feet. This was all her fault, she could feel the reality of the situation sinking into her skin to settle like a lump at the bottom of her stomach. She had broken him, she had been responsible for his happiness and life in those few moments and yet she still let it slip through her fingers and to the hardwood floor below. She moved to speak back to him, started to let a whisper flow from her lips, and yet his deep and ghostly voice tinged with feedback and layers of voices rose against her instead.

"If you aren't dead, Vivi, then why are you crying?"

Her mouth was open still to speak, but she couldn't bring herself to do it as his eyes bore holes into her skull. She exhaled deeply, letting the breath leave her body slowly and completely as she closed her eyes and ran a gentle yet searching finger through her tired and sore mind. He was before her now in whole, a beacon of longed for answers, the lighthouse to guide her sinking ship to solid shore and yet nothing would leave her traitorous mouth beside the release of wispy air through her hissing teeth and still sniffling nose. It took all of her willpower to look up at the ghost then, her eyes hard set as she prepared herself to answer. What a loaded question he posed.

"Why am I crying? You tell me, why am I crying?" She looked away quickly in a tiny bout of frustration, not able to continue staring into the softness of those two caverns without feeling herself weaken in reply; with the furiosity of darkness bursting from her throat, she couldn't let herself weaken in her heartfelt replies, "I have no clue who the hell you are, and yet I am so drawn to you. No matter what I do, you're at the front of my mind like some sort of obsession, but I have no clue who you are. You tried to kill my best friend for fuck's sake! I want to hate you so much, I want to want to cut you from my life and even this realm of existence for even thinking of laying a finger on the only person I have, but...I've never felt like this before," her hooded eyes were lifting now, not quite looking at him so much as the floor beneath his feet as she watched him shift to one leg uncomfortably, her voice softer now, "After we left, I felt so...elated, so overjoyed, and yet more depressed and frustrated and temperamental than I ever have through these past two years. You awakened something inside of me, an emotion I never knew existed, and so I ask you: Why am I crying? Who are you, and why does your absence bring me to tears? And since Arthur won't give me a straight answer, why don't you tell me what you have to do with the night Arthur lost his arm, the night we came to the hospital...the night I lost my memory?"

The phantom paused for a moment, silenced by the power within the blue girls words and the force behind her wavering voice. He turned away slightly, his shoulders hunched in defeat and loss as he lifted his hands to cross his arms across his barrel chest. His eyes tilted to the floor just as Vivi's had been, and the spirit who had once been larger than life became so small within the hospital room, within the confused anger of the girl he loved, that she feared he might just disappear. His voice as it blossomed into existence was no more than a wisp of smoke as the tiny candle fizzled and left the two defenseless within darkness, and the shadowed spirit faded even further with his ghostly voice turning to broken shards of glass, "You...you really don't remember me?"

She nodded just slightly, her head falling onto her chest as she replied halfheartedly and felt her own beating organ break into two upon the floor beneath his feet, "...I've never seen anyone like you in my life," she hated to see him so downcast, she could feel the heart of the man of her memories shattering again as though it were her own aching pain and couldn't stand the sorrow of it, "I remember...a little bit, I think. Your name is like a song, it starts with an L, two syllables that are so soft to speak...I nearly had it, I almost remembered, but I just can't! I can't, and it's my fault you're hurt so bad. Please, stopping being so sad, I can't be angry at you when you look so battered."

As her kindness seeped back into her words, the ghost couldn't help but smirk a little with his eyes, the edges glistening bittersweetly as his broad shoulders turned slightly back towards the girl in blue. Arms still crossed protectively, he stared straight ahead with threatening tears itching at the side of his bony face and a little mutter left to escape his quiet thoughts, "I guess my wish came true, then."

Vivi could feel herself growing slowly more frantic as he became more and more like the wall behind him, his body fading little by little as his eyes closed in acceptance and a little tear glimmered down his cheekbones. She looked around the room quickly, trying to find a way to make him stay within the confines of a hospital bed, hoping to prevent his sorrow from reaching its fever pitch and forcing him to disappear into the darkness and leave her so soon. More than anything, she needed him here for the answers he held locked inside his broken heart, she needed someone to fill her with stories. Her eyes hit the window with its bright light the same as the day she had woken up, the same as the day she had been born anew, and a thought struck her searching mind.

"I don't know if it will help, but this place is the last place I truly remember, the most vivid place in my mind, the hospital room I woke up in when Arthur was in a coma and I couldn't remember anything that happened. The place we were taken after some horrible incident in a cave, one with teeth and eyes and filled with green smoke, maybe fog. I...I don't remember anything before that, not truly. They play out in my mind but they aren't me and something is missing, it's like watching a movie. I see Arthur and I and I can feel that I was close to him, but the things we did are a dream to me. I see his mother and my past, I see the alleys and the gangs, I...I can see my father and my mother, and her lying dead, but it isn't me holding her head in my lap, it isn't me he's leaving behind. The only memories I can truly recall as my own are from this day forward, the day I woke up here with the sun shining so brightly and the doctor telling me I had amnesia. The day I had to relearn my name and who I was." she shifted in her bed, feeling her body squirm under the sideways glance of her ghostly listener, "Its been two years, and I still don't remember what happened in that damn cave."

He was coming back to life again as a bit of curiosity lit a match against his short wick, but his form only came to very slightly as he stepped from the shadows even further. He glided over to her bedside table and began rummaging through the drawers one by one, pausing as he glanced at the translucency of his bone-plated hands with a little bit of surprise. With each drawer, he ruffled through their contents with care, moving the papers aside of one, two...but there was nothing held inside drawer number three. With a little bit of relief escaping through his tense shoulders, the ghost stuck a hand carefully into the dark abyss that stretched on forever at the bottom of Vivi's drawer, somewhere she had never really looked into without any need to.

"Good, it's just a memory then." She looked at him, eyes tinged with confusion as her hands fell apart from each other in the ruffled sheets of her lap. He glanced at them quickly and saw the hearts inked into her palms, reaching out very slowly as to not scare her a second time. As he turned her palms over in the fading hands of his own, he began to tut like a disappointed parent, shaking his head rhythmically with a voice swinging low, "Oh, V, you shouldn't have used such a dangerous spell! I'm surprised that you were able to call me to you without a name, but if I had been dangerous, if I had wanted to hurt you...I could've, I still can without any wards set up. You're putting too much trust in some monster you don't even know."

She pulled her hands away as though she had been burned by the words of the phantom, finding his knowledge of her actions to be somewhat unsettling, "What are you talking about, how can you know what's in my books?"

Vivi could feel his smile as a warm rush of light fluttered over her skin, and aura spreading across her and him both as she sensed his happiness tinged with the childish sense of pride that swelled in the rising of his chest as he lifted his skull confidently, momentarily sidetracked, "Who do you think translated the Spanish notes? I read that book so many times, over and over again-they were once mine, you know. And I remember specifically that spell as especially dangerous to the summoner. Without strong wards ghosts like me can take over your mind and body without any trouble whatsoever. Other, more complex spells bind spirits to so many rules that they can't possibly dream of hurting their tether, but this one is too simple, too risky. You could've been really hurt, V."

She was more than a little surprised by this sudden development, recalling thoughtfully the conscious script written delicately beside the cursive words within every book she had found in the van so far. Her eyes met his hollow ones with eyes knit, grabbing their attention as she became tense and wary towards the spirit. No longer did she feel safe, only confused.

"Who _are _you? No more stalling with chatter about books and spells, how do you know so much about me?"

The ghost held her gaze steadily then, his expression changing swiftly from pride and excitement to the serious and sorrowful glare of someone holding more than enough heartbreak in response to the heavy words she carried. Twice he went to speak, made to fill the silence between them with truth and honesty, but each time his flickering flame fell to nothing but smoke. He looked at his feet, knowing it would take more than matches to light the truth beneath the feet of his bright summoner.. With a hand reaching up to cradle and hover above his broken and dying heart, Vivi watched him stammer and fail to bring words to his actions. It wasn't until his arms held the heart out at full length towards her that his fire enveloped her, and it was with these words that he finally spoke with hushed certainty.

"Vivi, I wanted you to forget for a reason. If you truly want to remember me, you must take into your own hands the pain that I felt, that pain that I saved you from. V, you...you didn't deserve what happened."

She glanced at the glass between his hands and began to reach forward without hesitation or pause, but as she neared the glass heart so beautifully held in front of her she began to wonder, to think back upon the last two years of her life, the only times she could remember with utmost certainty and clarity. This was it, the moment she had waited so bitterly for since waking up in this hospital, in this bed, with the same light shining through the same windows on the same sunny day, but was this truly something she could handle? Her mind skipped to Arthur, so adamant and obstinate in his withholding of the memories she couldn't seem to find; never had he been one to keep secrets from her in their entire life together, and yet when it concerned the ghost of her past and what happened so long ago, he became so aggressive, so sad. Every time she found a clue, a little hint into what might have been the answer to her questions, the headaches would take hold and she would be left in the pain of a lost mind held under lock and key by some dutiful guardian, the pain she felt nearly tangible as she attempted to recall little tidbits and scraps left to gather dust in the back. Someone-supposedly the one standing in front of her right now-hadn't wanted her to know, didn't want her to remember whatever pains she felt while inside the confines of the cave, but then again...there were so many questions, so many things she couldn't explain. In the hospital, why had she felt the need to wear the mourning black instead of her usual bright and vivid blues? Why had her heart sunken so much when she looked upon Arthur, reaching out for feelings of love she hadn't truly felt towards the orange boy in their extensive lives together, and would this be her answer? Which option weighed heavier in consequence, and was her choice the right one?"

Without further thought and a little flash of teeth to bite her quivering lip in concentration and determination, Vivi reached forwards to cup the broken heart she had so carelessly dropped in her hands with the gentleness of a mother, vowing not to let it slip from her grasp a second time. Without the heat of the flames it had once held hostage, she could bring her hands closer to the surface as she hadn't been able to before, and with his eyes staring so fondly and worriedly into her forehead she let her decision ring true. Her fingers brushed the glassy surface, and with that simple touch the locket burst open in a shock of light.

There was a rhythmic pulse through her body as, rested between the cage of blue glass, she gazed upon a fading photobooth picture cut fastidiously into shape and guarded so carefully by the ghost's lifeline and force of being. She was hit with a burst of pain, a glance at remembrance as she lifted a finger to run a small circle around the face of the girl, so blue yet with the brightness of a smile lighting her cheeks and her hands gripping the side of her face, a giant so gentle in his loving embrace. This wasn't just a photo.

It was a picture of Vivi, and next to her was…

She was pushed back to a life long lost to her, so different and yet parallel with the memories she had only so recently unearthed. They were in some ways the same and yet in many ways different, and yet there was one more person riding in the van with Arthur and her, one more team mate to fill the empty seats of the van, one more companion to cling to when the nights got too cold on the floor of the old car. With fondness she remembered huddling in the back against the couch together with boxes of books at their feet, minds open and pens flying as they took notes against the yellowing paper of her notepad and his copies; she remembered running and laughing and hunting the mystical creatures and spirits they so furiously studied, hair whipping in the wind as Arthur cried and she shouted back in delight; she even remembered the nights where she'd wake up in a cold sweat, the nightmares that haunted her gone to her memory but lingering in her fear, only to find herself safe in the arms of someone who enveloped her so wholly; but most of all, she remembered those purple eyes. In all their verdure, she remembered the living beauty of his shy violets, always so bright as they followed her every movement. Anyway she might turn, she could feel his adoration documenting her with loving attention, keeping the glowing wonder and child-like curiosity safe within his own mind. Nothing could stop the sweet smile that spread from cheek to cheek across her face, the joy and sugar within her lips taking in the happiness of days long past all at once and reveling in the simple yet cheerful days she had tried so hard to go back to with Arthur.

But then she saw the cave appear beside their van, looming and ominous and billowing green as it opened its maw to consume the little investigation team whole. Her memory still held the lingering traces of happiness, and yet Vivi was beginning to piece together the puzzle in her mind, beginning to realize just what happened in the cave that fateful night. A whimper escaped her lips, but no matter her struggles she could not leave the memories without seeing them through, without fully reliving the pain she must have suffered in those moments before it all fell black. Lewis and Arthur branched off to leave her alone and she left to explore the lower cave, covered in jealous green fog as it wrapped around her and obstructed her view. And yet, even with the area turned blurry she could still see the dot of pink above her on the cliff, she could still see him clear as day as he fell with arms reaching up towards Arthur. With utmost clarity, she could hear herself screaming her throat raw as his eyes, those shy, violet, angel eyes, turned to meet hers. Her tears never even touched the ground as everything within her view grew to a blinding pink, a deafening crescendo of bright light, and yet she could see his heart rising, she could see his chest...his chest was…

Vivi fell forward suddenly, growing faint as she came back from the haunting memories. There was a sharp pain through her breast, a puncture as though she had been the one impaled upon the reaching stalagmites below within the glowing green fog. It was terrible and absolute, all of the love and pain her heart took in only a few minutes time, and as she watched the ground in front of her grow closer still she could feel his arms catching her, wrapping around her, just as they had so many nights ago, so many times before. As he lowered her to the cold floor beneath to rest in his arms like a sick child, she could feel the subtle pinpricks of recognition grabbing at her eyes and sending the bright pinkness of tears to cascade down her full cheeks, glowing and shining against her pale skin. With a moment's time she felt her entire world come back to her, and in that moment she reached up to caress his face and sob his name and pull him as close to her as was physically possible, all the while keeping his heart suspended in the air between them.

"Lulu! Oh, Lew, I'm...I'm so sorry, I can't believe I...how could I ever forget you? Lulu, Lulu, how are you here with me right now with your heart beating and your hands so whole? You were falling and then I...I couldn't save you, I couldn't run fast enough or reach high enough, I couldn't remember anything. I swear, Lewis, I never wanted to forget you, I...I…"

He pulled her face to his chest, so warm and living as he stroked her hair and closed his eyes in bittersweet bliss, wishing this moment could last forever, "Lewis, I remember everything. I remember hunting with you and reading and...cuddling, sleeping, being safe like this. I can't believe I forgot your...your…"

As she was hit by another rock inside of her throat, she had to close her eyes to stop the flow of rushing water from flooding the spirit in front of her, from taking him so deep underwater that his fiery heart couldn't burn bright. He lowered his head and buried his face into the ocean covering her untamable head with the softness and carefulness of a big brother, inhaling and basking in the presence of his divine darling, "It's alright, Blueberry. I'm the only reason you don't remember, I never wanted you to get hurt like you did. I wanted you to live a life free of my memory, a life where you could be truly happy," he pulled her even tighter into his breast, almost as though she might flutter away as she already had before, "I'm just glad you're here now, Vivi. I'm just glad you're safe."

She looked up at him, pulling her head from his to look into his eyes without restraint now, without the shyness and awkward quiet of not knowing the one who knew you so well clouding her view of this familiar stranger, "No, Lewis, I wasn't happier without you. I remember everything now, but even when I didn't...I still missed you, even if I didn't know who I was missing. I can't believe I forgot your...your…" She looked away and shook her head, closing her eyes as she questioned and berated herself, "Lew, If I had...if I had known you had...I would have searched to the ends of the Earth for-"

"And that's why I wished so hard that you might forget." he assured, placing a hand gently against her cheek to gently guide her eyes back to him as he rubbed her jawline, delicately and adroitly, "I wanted you to live like nothing had happened at all. I wanted you to live as normally as a ghost hunter can, maybe even go back to our home town and settle down back at the Tome Tomb, find your own way to happiness. I wanted your life to keep on going without me."

As these waves of fondness rolled off of him, Vivi saw Lewis begin to regain his form, no longer see-through as his dark hands touched her skin opaquely. She grabbed his large palm in her small and chubby fingers, mimicking the picture held tenderly between them by some magic, the locket still open and glowing in the little space above his chest. With so much happiness flowing around them, so much unbridled giddiness and glee of remembrance of shared compassion, Vivi felt an inkling of fear tug at the edges of her ecstatic soul. What came after this, what came when the hospital faded and she woke up, alone in her motel room, just as she had feared? Still curled up in Lewis' lap, she pulled her arms around his neck, smushing the heart gently between them with speculation and hesitation thick on her tongue.

"Lewis...what happens when this is all over?"

His tender hands paused in their curling of her hair, pausing with a handful of her river pouring through the bone plates of his fingers. She could feel his chest rise as though he were taking in a massive breath, but his head didn't move and Lewis' eyes didn't close or shy away from their gaze upon the wall behind her. He stared straight ahead, unmoving and frozen in this instant.

"What do you mean?"

She swallowed, turning her face to the side so that her cheek rested on the softness of his suit, "Will you fade away? Lewis, is this merely a last stop before you go on to whatever afterlife waits for you? Will I...will I forget about you again once I wake up in the motel, once the hospital is gone and I...and I…" she looked up at him, chin digging into the black fabric and pink tears staining it dark with salt, "and will you disappear for good? I saw you fading from the window of the mansion, Lewis. This is all my fault."

Lewis paused only momentarily before taking her hands lightly from around his neck and holding her at a distance, no longer intertwined and tangled together as he looked deeply into the soul her bright blue eyes held. He wrapped her hands in his own, revelling in the contrast between her tiny little digits and his oversized fingers before molding them around the broken glass of his heart once more. It gave a pulse of light, blinding orange filling the desperate blue with flame once more before falling dark again in a rhythmic motion, a beat. With each stroke of light through the locket, the cracks mended in the sensitive grasp of Vivi's pale hands, yet it was only as she lead the heart to her lips with a whispering kiss that the heart finally began to glow on its own. With this newfound life, Lewis became truly whole once more, and the stars lighting the glass beneath the surface were beautiful and brilliant and mesmerizing, a reflection of her curious eyes imprinting upon its surface. As she guided the heart back to its tender body, she was pulled with a new vigor to take refuge in the folds of Lewis' body, and it was with this living passion that he spoke back to her.

"No matter what, Vivi, I will never leave your side ever again. If you will have me, I will be beside you for the rest of our tiny eternity." she could feel the air around her grow warm with the dryness of flame, the rising of his rebirth crackling around them with the heat of sparking embers gripping and playing with her skin. Her tears came thicker and faster, taking the moment and finding it hopeless as her voice poured into the ocean.

"Lewis, don't go just yet! I don't...I don't want you to move one. Please don't fade away, we can stay here forever, we can be like this for the rest of our lives, I promise. Just please don't move on. Please don't go to the light. I'm not ready to let you go, not yet."

He chuckled, so warm and strong now that his life force had been restored and was running strong through his bones, a wildfire tearing through the remnants of his veins, "V, you got it all wrong. Look around, I am still with you, am I not?"

Her eyes sprung up from the lingering warmth of his undead body to gaze around the room once more, finding her glance met not by the hospital but the motel room from which she hailed. No longer were they surrounded by the blue and white of the pure and sacred place but the darker, earthier tones of forest green and a deep brown. The backpack filled with her toiletries, the book turned upside down on the bedside table, the folds in the bed where she had summoned her phantom and failed...everything she had was there, she was truly back to where she had been with Lewis still holding her, still solid.

"I always thought I was tethered to the locket around my neck, Vivi, that the only thing keeping me whole was my glass heart and the hatred that pulled me from the darkness, the despair I felt for so long, so long...but it wasn't like that at all. The reason I'm here is not because I attached myself to some necklace I wore when I fell, but to the memory guarded inside of it. I was tethered to this world by my love of you, by your memory and your laughter and the stars that fill your eyes." He was so confident now, so sure of himself as he spoke that he nearly didn't even realize the proclamation that he let slip through his mind, the gentle and nearly unnoticeable declaration that scurried from his heart full and true and beating. As his bones filled with embarrassment and he stepped away quickly from Vivi with newfound pompadour glowing near white with heat, he looked away like a shy elementary child after letting go that he might have a crush, "I mean, platonic love that is. Of course, uhm, we were really good friends."

Vivi blushed for the ghost with a delicate smile hidden behind her hooded eyes and gentle lashes growing bashful, her hands reaching out to grab his as she took a moment of thoughtful silence, a moment of crucial planning and careful thought. Things like this didn't come lightly, she knew that after so many years of pure existence.

"You know," she grinned, turning his hands in hers observedly, "I'm actually really surprised that I can touch you, Lulu. The only other ghosts I've known with that much control were the ones guarding you, your little friends in the mansion. It's unique, it's very special."

He lifted one of his hands to reach behind to where the back of his neck used to be, letting it hover as he gave in to a cute and old nervous habit of his, "I've been around long enough to gain a good amount of control I guess, I'm just glad you guys didn't find me before I began to lose it. That would've been a lot rougher. I mean, you remember how ghosts age from my abuela's book, right? It said that-"

"It's good...I'm glad."

She had muttered so gently that Lewis almost didn't hear her. Her eyes were still pinned to the hand that she held, her thumb running circled along the bone plates and the inner darkness of his palm. He could feel his face growing hot, could feel his emotional control sizzle into that of a teenage boy as the woman he adored ran her skin against his fingers, "W-why, what do you mean?"

Her blue eyes met his at once, the rings of pink glowing brightly with energy and confusion as she suddenly leaned in closer to him with her little smile lighting up the room and her arms pulling his digits to her chest, letting the ghost feel her beating heart within. She let her voice out as a whisper of mischievous rain, and with the slow drop of water from her lips Lewis could feel his entire being begin to melt.

"I'm glad because...because I was afraid I'd never get to do this."  
Her body pushed her onto her tiptoes in an instant as she reached with her tiny hands to grip either side of Lewis' bony face, pulling his skull to her lips with eyes closed and heart hurrying quicker than she had ever felt it fly. There was a sudden and blinding puff of pink fire as she met the part of his face where his mouth had once been, his pompadour bursting into large flame atop his head with the surprise and wide-eyed confusion of a kiss, and yet as she held herself there he couldn't help but close his glowing eyes and let his wild hair come to rest. Whatever anxieties plagued him before flowed away down her river, and just as he had always dreamed, Lewis enveloped Vivi with both of their hearts running and jumping and sprinting away. Even as she pulled away, her eyes opening to dust his cheekbones with gentle kisses from her eyelashes, Lewis could feel his head growing numb and his body falling weak in the wake of her brilliance. He held her in his arms without relent, his phantom muscles shunning release as he felt his voice rise back into his head.

"Vivi, I'm never letting you go." He whispered, a voice so filled with pain and heartbreak and missed opportunities that it felt broken to the ears of the sorrowful beholder, "No matter what happens, I am never letting you go. I promise you this."

"Well, you see, the thing is…" Vivi giggled, beginning to squirm like a child in his grasp as she remembered something very important, "before we go on embracing until the end of time, I'd like to get my pajamas on at least." she was so happy, so electric as he released her to begin walking towards the cheap motel bathroom, "The key to a healthy relationship is comfortable boxers, I can assure you that. Just give me two seconds."

"Oh. Uh, yeah, good idea." His hair had settled down now, no longer jumping into the air and threatening to burn the motel down but still dancing at the base of his skull with animated excitement and thrill. As he was struck with a dizzying pain to his newly rejuvenated glass heart, he began to follow Vivi to wait outside the bathroom like a loyal hound dog, leaning against the wall as she began to bang around with the mandatory teeth-brushing and face-washing. He let his hands drum against the wall half mindedly, and after a few moments of silence, her timid voice rose from inside, tinged with awkwardness.

"Uhm, Lew, what are you doing waiting outside my door like that?"

If he had blood and skin, the skeleton would have no doubt blushed as her words caught him in the act. Instead, he let his hair lighten in color, growing hot and white with embarrassment as he answered back with just a little bit of guilt gripping his tone, "Well, a-as a ghost, I'm tethered to, uh, people and things. It, well, I was originally attached to my mansion and was able to roam about because of the Deadbeats, but, uh, when you drew the hearts on your palms and summoned me you became a new tether in a way." His arm crossed, and he could hear Vivi resume her nightly ritual as he continued to speak shyly, "I don't know how far away from you I can be before I begin to fade, but it was kind of hurting when I stood in the main area away from you. I don't feel as dizzy when I'm over here."

The faucet rang loudly with the promise of freshly running water, and Lewis had to strain to hear over the noisy sound of rushing liquid through the piping, "What'll happen if you get too far away from me?"

"I honestly don't know," he admitted, crossing his legs now as he looked out the motel's large windows, partly covered by the blinds, "I'm hoping I'll merely be forced to you, teleported or dragged maybe. Or, if that isn't it, maybe the tether will be broken and I'll go back to my mansion. Worse comes to worse, I'll fade away or totally lose control of myself and became a being of rage, so its not something I'd like to test out. In all the years we hunted ghosts together, no spirit ever left the side of their tether, and so I'm going to assume there's a good reason for that."

A car pulled into the lot, loud as its belt screeched and the wheels came to a shouting halt outside of their large windows. Lewis looked away in the hopes that the man who stepped out wouldn't see him and call the police or another ghost investigation team. He didn't exactly look human.

"You have a point. I called you to me with these drawings on my palms-do you think the tether will break if I wash them off, or maybe if they fade with time?"

He nodded despite the fact that she couldn't see him through the bathroom door, "I'll probably just be transported back to the mansion, but I wouldn't want to risk it. I remember reading that the drastic breaking of a tether can cause abnormal and premature fading."

Instead of dread or worry, her voice rang out with laughter from behind the walls of the bathroom despite the seriousness of the subject, making Lewis jump in surprise as he watched the light pouring from beneath the door, "I guess I'll just have to get some tattoos, then? Might as well get that tramp stamp I always wanted as well, spice things up a little. I hope the place across the street cleans their needles is all I have to say."

Lewis could feel a smile tugging at the edge of his eyes, his own voice thick and playful as he answered back, "I'd join in getting inked, but I don't think bone would retain pigment very well," with this, his smile faded a little and he looked deeper into the implications that such a simple tattoo would have for Vivi, "You know, it really takes 'spending the rest of our lives together' to a whole other level. I literally wouldn't be able to leave your side."

The door opened suddenly and banged against the wall opposite him as, dressed in a bright white T-shirt sporting the Cabin in the Woods logo and a pair of bright blue ghost boxers, Vivi looked up at Lewis without restraint or worry and responded to his words cheerfully, "To be honest, that doesn't sound half bad."

She headed towards her bed cutely, her head bobbing and her chubby body busy with moving the comforter as the clock flashed angrily at her to announce just how early in the morning it was. Lewis followed like a puppy, enamored by the beauty of the woman he so loved as he sat down in the armchair at the foot of her bed dutifully. She began to curl herself into an impossibly tight little cocoon of blankets; it wasn't even that cold outside, but Vivi could only sleep well when she felt warm and coddled and protected. she could feel the heat of her body radiating through the blankets, her feet sweating as she pulled them up and into the fetal position, but as she closed her eyes she couldn't even begin to rest. Too much was frolicking through her mind, and it was with a dry and shy throat that she spoke up towards Lewis.

"Hey, uh, Lulu? Could you...could you cuddle with me, just for a little bit?"

The skeleton, now staring into the distance thoughtfully as his link prepared for bed, jumped at this startling request. Before he had died, the two had shared a bed more than a couple times when the van grew too cold to handle, but in the motels they only ever snuggled up together three times, when she had those debilitating nightmares. Despite this surprise, Lewis wasn't necessarily disappointed, and it was with excitement that he stood up to head to the bed after a few moments taken to compose his taken aback self.

"You know, I might not be as warm as you remember. I am a ghost after all."

She shook her head as it poked out from the comforter, grinning wider than the Pacific, "No, you're still warm. You're like a campfire, kind of toasty and dry but it feels really nice. I just don't want to sleep alone tonight, not after I just found you. I feel like…"

Her voice trailed off as, still in his suit, Lewis crawled into bed next to her. She opened up the sheets to allow him the comfort and closeness of the blanket, and he heaved himself in closer to her with a hint of timidity in his hold. Knowing that she felt the same way for him, what had once been a simple and brotherly act took on a whole new level of intimacy, and he could feel his bones tingling as she curled up against him.

One of her hands found its way to his chest, barely there as she pulled her legs up tightly into a ball and rested her head in the crook of his neck, "I missed you so much, even if I didn't know it, Lew. I was mourning without knowing who I was weeping for-I wore black, I couldn't sleep, and I cried so much without knowing why or what for. I...I love you. I love you, and I missed you, and I especially missed this."

He pressed his skull against the top of her head, her voice tinged with sleepiness and running slow as honey against the quickness of his now beating heart, "I love you too, Vivi. We're together now, we don't ever have to miss each other again. Just close your eyes, and I promise I won't disappear tonight."

She yawned, her face stretching as she inhaled deeply and ended with a grin lighting her closed eyes. Lewis could feel her breathing slow, her chest rising gradually less as she was pulled into the deepness of the rest she would receive. Even as her smile fell away and her eyelids became loose and without tension, Lewis couldn't help but stare in wonder at her innocent beauty. Fit together like a puzzle, nothing but this moment mattered


	17. Morning Glories

Chapter 17: Morning Glories

Vivi stirred subtly in the morning light, twisting her body ever so slightly to land the rays of sun onto her pale and shimmering face like a spotlight on her waking performance. It could have only been a few moments since she had fallen into her beautifully deep sleep, an hour at most if you stretched the time long enough, and yet her eyes were batting so sweetly at Lewis and her cheeks were filling with a flush of bright color and those big blue eyes were brimming with a sleepy sort of tenderness, a subconscious display of adoration tinting the sky blue. Lewis held her still as he had promised earlier, vowing never to let her go as she welcomed herself wonderfully back to the waking world with a sigh of pleasure. She was perfect, and he felt perfect, and everything was just as it should have been.

She smiled wide, a grin to best all grins with her cheeks turning those brilliant eyes into happy crescents, sparkling gems filled with thousands of facets. If Lewis' face could soften even further than it already had, it did with that last show of tired affection, growing even warmer inside his newly fixed heart as it beat a steady and somewhat embarrassed pulse. This was what he had waited a million years for, a thousand eternities, just to be like this with Vivi again. Just to hold her, to feel her, to watch her living like she always had and he hoped she would for a long time after. This was it for him, he could die happy.

"You know, watching people sleep is a little creepy."

Vivi's voice was a dove's wing against the backdrop of a Sunday sunrise, sweeping across the horizon with a peaceful, graceful silence before fluttering off into the distant sun as it rose from beneath the Earth in its own slumber. Lewis could feel the pale feathers dance across his face as her breath warmed his chest, sending silent electricity through his bones and between his joints with a shock and leaving him stunned in hush. His eyes closed to revel in the fullness of this moment, taking time to enjoy the simpleness of his desires and the innocence of his wishes. For now, he only wanted to hear her voice speak again, her breath hover above his deathly chest, because in that escape of air he could feel all the galaxies painting warm patterns on his phantom cheeks.

"I couldn't sleep, not with you so close by for the first time in forever. I don't need to rest, anyway," Lewis tore his eyes away from Vivi to glance at the clock on the bedside table, wondering why the heaviest sleeper in the world had slept for only a few short moments before realizing that it was much later than he had expected, "and, honestly, I guess I got so lost in the sounds of you sleeping that I kinda let time slip by. I swear it was two in the morning just a few seconds ago."

She giggled a little before a yawn began to distort her soft features, turning her smirk into a wide and gaping cavern without end as her eyes closed and tears jumped to wet her eyes. First her legs pulled with toes outstretched to the very edge of the bed, releasing the tension in her feet and calves as she reached her arms taut above her head in the same fashion. Lewis released her just a little bit so that she might extend herself even easier, but as she gave one last tug of her waking body it was around his shoulders that her arms fell. With a heave of achy limbs, she pulled herself further up the motel bed to plant a good morning kiss on the bony head of Lewis, a little peck of affection that sent his head up in flames and scorched his pillow with the crisp stench of smoke.

Vivi laughed, loud and clear throughout the motel room as the morning sun lit her face and filled her up with gold. She knew it was the same Lewis that she had so loved if from afar, yet watching an intense and slightly terrifying skeleton ghost of vengeance and fire grow shy and embarrassed at a little kiss was more than enough to tickle her. He was adorable, trying to act so stoic and cool but ending up with hair hot white and flaming nervously at the edges, his eyes flaring brightly in response to her gentle touches. It was like blush on a middle schooler's cheeks, it was like the cracking voice of a high school sweetheart, it was the cutest thing she had ever seen.

"You're so adorable when you're embarrassed, Lulu!" She was giggling like a preschooler now, her voice a coin purse as it jingled with the promise of wealth and joy, "So, if you didn't sleep, what did you do in your spare time in that mansion? Two years is a long time, and there wasn't anything remotely fun in the mansion I saw."

He let his warm face go back to normal before speaking, each word heavy with slow thought as he processed his memories and tried to conjure a clear picture in his head. Honestly, he hadn't done much throughout his stay in the mansion, but what did she expect from a vengeful spirit? They had never exactly been the poster children for productivity.

"Well, I did have a room with a big TV and some older gaming consoles lots of movies, too. I'd play long games in one sitting, marathon Lord of the Rings, that kind of thing. When I got lonely, I had the Dead Beats to keep me company; the pulled a lot of pranks on me, left me little gifts, and even if they couldn't speak to me all the time it was good to talk to them every once in awhile. They protected me and kept me happy, they really cared for me back there." He grinned softly, reminiscing and remembering fondly the ghosts who had cared for him in his spectral infancy, "Sometimes, I'd sing with them quietly, but I was never very good. They enjoyed it anyway."

She reached her hands down to play with his, rolling them over to expose his dark palms as she ran circles around them absentmindedly, "What about that big ol' fridge? You even had a little skull on it, like a branding to say 'keep out!' or something. It was filled to the top! I know you used to like cooking, but…"

He watched her hands as they twirled around his, still smiling as he continued on, "Yeah, I cooked non-stop in the first week or so. I must have made at least a hundred dishes! My Dad always said it was something you had to keep up on, that if I left the kitchen alone for too long I'd lose my family's touch," he began to grow somewhat downcast after his words of pride and excitement, switching from bright eyes to a dull ring of saddened pink, "but then I just stopped. It was too hard for me, reminded me of too much without any real outcomes."

Vivi was watching him closely now, but his eyes were still down on her hands and away from her face, his plated digits gripping hers like a lifeline with desperation and a little bit of lost sorrow, remorse, guilt. He flickered like a dying light bulb at the thoughts, the memories rushing back, his flaming head growing solid with his rising anxieties and saddening acceptance of something on the edge of his tongue, so close and terrifying and true that his words hardly rose to meet her eager ears.

"You know, I've forgotten what my father's food tastes like. I can't remember the spiciness of the chilies or the sweetness of the bells, the consistency of chicken, the creaminess of milk...It's all gone. Food literally goes right through me without taste or smell or feeling, it's become nothing to me," the movements of his weary hands came to a halt, resting idle in Vivi's protection as he pondered what would become of him with concerns to his family, "and then I think about them, my siblings and parents. How will they react to me, V? Or will I be forced never to see them again for fear that they won't accept me? My Mom was nearly killed by a vengeful ghost when she was a little girl, and my Dad was raised by a ghost hunter. And I mean hunter, not at all like us. You and me, we've always tried to find a way to let spirits go in peace, but my abuela...so long as the ghost was gone, she called it good. All the doors and windows in my family's house are lined with pure salt, and the one time my Dad found those lines broken, he nearly burned the house down for fear that something had gotten in. To them, I'd no longer be their son but the child of the devil himself. They...they'd never accept me, not like this."

Vivi reached her hand up to frame his face, rubbing the side of his skull gently to comfort him as his eyes closed with the impending threat of ghostly tears at memories most likely lost forever to him, drifting down the terrible tide of time and fate, "Oh, Lew," she whispered, pausing to gather breath as his brow knitted in pain, "I'm sure they'd understand, somehow. There's nothing your family values more than-"

Before her words could reach their timely end, Vivi was met with the intensely jarring sound of metal on plastic as it filled the room loudly and violated the silence of her early morning chat with Lewis. Three knocks, loud as descending bombs onto a battlefield, gave her tiny heart a fearful start and forced her to jump in surprise while Lewis naturally fell into a protective stance on top of her. At first Vivi grew irritates, angry that such a special and tender moment between her and her long lost love had been broken, stolen from her; then, she grew fearful, because in the eyes of her phantom she could see the red promise of blood vengeance and hatred, and she knew who was on the other side of the door.

His voice was a sliver of hope within the burning of a forest fire, unaware of any danger at all as he spoke up warily, "Hey, uh, Viv? You should probably wake up. They got a free breakfast going on in the lobby, continental or whatever it was. It would probably be good for us to grab something to eat before we go, stock up and stuff." She could hear him gulp noticeably as his throat grew dry, her mind showing her in detail the exact movements of her best friend after years spent together, "Also, I would, uh, like to talk to you. I'd like to apologize. I've been...I've been acting weird lately, and you don't deserve it, and...well, come down to breakfast and we'll get this all figured out, okay?"

It took all of Vivi's power to keep a strong hold of Lewis' arm as he slowly began to rise further and further from the bed, nearly floating as he stood up with hair a blazing streak of pink fire taking refuge on his bald skull. He was a flame of angry heat and boiling energy, taking long stride with the sprinting of his anger and preparing himself to deal a final blow through the plastic that separated him from his target, poised to knock it down and send a cleansing rush of flame towards the unsuspecting man on the other side. An ember strayed from his pink head, lighting the bedsheet with a wisp of smoke as a disaster began to steadily grow. To keep the motel from burning down, Vivi was forced to release Lewis so that she might smother the flame before it spread.

Arthur knocked again, unknowing of the struggle going on within as his rhythmic beating on the door grew louder and somewhat more anxious, "...Vivi? I don't want to come in there and wake you up, there's not much time le-"

"No!" Vivi shouted quickly and suddenly, her voice shrill as it shrieked forward in an attempt to stop her friend from entering the room. Lewis was still fast approaching the door, and if Arthur opened it even the slightest...he would be ash in less than a few seconds, something Vivi couldn't bear to think, "No, Arthur, I'm up. I just, uhm, don't have any clothes on right now! So you might not want to come in, it would be very awkward if you did. I'll be down in just a little bit!"

There was only silence now. Lewis had placed his feet back on the carpet now, no longer floating but still as stone with his eyes planted dutifully on the door and his hands raised with tiny flames dancing in each palm. Vivi was holding her breath without realizing it, hoping her blatant lie had sounded sincere enough to lead Arthur away from the motel room door, but she could still hear him breathing on the other side, heavy and thick. There was a small 'clink' as his metal hand rested lightly on the door in absorbed thought, but her best friend made no attempt to enter. She could hear in his voice the embarrassment as he backed away very slowly, and she could feel his warm blush through the door like a campfire. Or was that the impending flames still rising on a few feet away fro her, in Lewis' hands?

"Oh, alright then. Well, don't take too long, the breakfast closes in half an hour. You don't want to miss out on, like, five whole wheat bagels and maybe some dried out bread. Possibly an egg if we're lucky enough. I'll, uh, leave you to your...nakedness…"

His heavy feet were clear on the concrete outside, loud and resounding as he left the red danger zone and headed back the way he had come. There was a release of anxious breath on Vivi's part, an exhale of all the tension she had felt in those last dire moments as they fell away from her in one fell swoop of relaxation. Her clenched hands released the charred blanket, smudges of black staining the bright hearts on her palms and clouding her vision as she reached one hand up to rub her eye. Those eyes closed now with the knowledge that the phantom who threatened her companion couldn't stray far enough to get him. Arthur was safe for now, and Vivi was growing very, very angry.

It was nearly flawless, her metamorphosis from relieved best friend to pissed off girlfriend. One moment, she was completely encompassed by her celebration for the life of the one she cared so dearly for, the clear safety and release from harm of her companion for life, a team mate and partner in crime escaping at the last minute as the bomb ticked away with impatient clocks all around The next moment, she was filled with a passionate rage of immense diameter, her cheeks flushing with anger and her blue hair standing on end and the goose bumps on her arms raising with distaste and distrust. Her eyes sprung open and squinted angrily at Lewis as though trying to rationalize his actions, his skull still facing the door before it swung around to face her with a hurt kind of betrayal lining his eyes and a lot of confusion mingling into a mass of terrifying intensity. Both had many words to say, but as Vivi lifted herself from the bed with cold presence, it was clear they didn't have the time.

"Why didn't you let me get him, Vivi? That was my chance! I could have-"

"No, you couldn't have, I wouldn't have let you," She huffed, walking up to him with her tiny chest puffed out like a little angry bird, "What were you thinking? Were you just going to burn the entire motel to the ground with all the innocent people-and us-inside of it? And who gave you the right to murder my best friend?"

Lewis sputtered, clearly surprised by the fact that she wasn't supporting him in his endeavor and the still standing loyalty towards the traitor behind the door, ever present in the strength of her unwavering straightness, "Did you just forget what he did to me, V? He killed me, in cold blood! How can you possibly tolerate being anywhere near him after what he did? We were happy, we were-"

"I wasn't done!" She was livid, her face a bright red and her eyes leaving bullet wounds through his bones, "There are always two sides to a story. Before you go apeshit and burn Arthur alive, I'm going to get both of those sides, no argument. Until then, you have no right to kill him."

Lewis sat down in the armchair of the room with an exasperated and heavy sigh, falling down hard on the stony cushions and pulling his arms across his chest as Vivi began to rummage through her overnight bag, "Is there ever really an excuse for killing an innocent person, Vivi? Murder is murder, and that's never right."

His voice was nearly a whisper, like a bitter child who wants nothing more than the last word in an argument. It was biting and sharp, and it hurt Vivi more than anything he had said prior to. She stopped shuffling through her bag for a moment as she absorbed his words and yet, no matter how she looked at them, they were still painful, vicious, untrusting. He would never understand.

"Yes, sometimes...sometimes accidents happen. Things don't go the way you plan, and...and…" she began to shift the many things in her bag again, grabbing pieces of clothing and boxes as she went. She pushed the memories from her head before they could spread and take hold of her, so close to her heart yet far away in time. Should she tell him now, the secret she forced away with every breath?

"No. There's never an excuse."

She guessed not.

Vivi began to absentmindedly change her clothes without thought to the boy in the room with her, pulling her T-shirt over her head with mind still focused entirely on the suppressed memories in front of her. She could see from the corner of her eyes that Lewis was growing shy and bright despite his anger, averting his eyes to give Vivi a little privacy as she switched out her boxers for something a little nicer, but Vivi was still in a fighting mood. Her skin continued to crawl, her mind shouted answers and arguments, the hair on her arms stood up ferally in response to the anger she felt. She couldn't leave Lewis without knowing he wouldn't hurt the boy she cared for like a brother, his safety was of her utmost concern, and so she had to play dirty.

"Lewis, he was distraught once you died. On the rare night that he fell asleep before I did and I could hold his hands, I found marks on the inside of his hands, little cuts like he had...like he had clenched them to the point of bleeding, something purposeful. Sometimes, I had to stay up with him for days on end so he wouldn't...so he wouldn't kill himself. He wasn't happy, or elated, or even indifferent to your death-even if I didn't know why, I knew he was sad, Lewis." Vivi began pulling something else from her bag, now fully dressed in her usual clothes though Lewis still stared off to the side as a courtesy, "He blames himself for your death, but I know him, and he'd never kill no matter how jealous he grew. If I hadn't been there with him, Lewis, he would have done something more...permanent."

As she found what she was looking for within the never ending abyss of her bag, Vivi could hear Lewis scoff with disgust and a new burst of cold anger filled her short frame with freezing fire, "Good," he muttered, crossing his legs and continuing to look out the window as Vivi kneeled down on the ground with a piece of chalk in her shaking hands. If she weren't so focused on the task at hand, she'd have quite a few angry words to day to her phantom, "He killed me, he deserves to die. By his own hand is as good as any."

"And that's where you and I differ in opinion, Lew. But I'll get to the bottom of this, I'll prove him innocent, and I'll solve this mystery even if I have to do it alone." She mumbled, finishing her drawing on the ground with a disappointed sigh. Lewis went to speak, maybe argue his point further, but as he looked back at her from his view of the window he found he no longer had the power to do anything more than speak. Surrounding the little chair with which he sat, like a ring of sharks in the water, was an intricate and quickly drawn ghost trap, a ward that prevented the leaving of a spirit from a specific place. Vivi, blue chalk in hand, stood proudly over her handiwork with a little grin and no remorse, "And if that means leaving you hear for a few minutes, then hell yeah I'd doing it. While I'm down with Arthur, I want you to take some time to think about what you did today and how you could've done it differently. Think of it as time out, but for misbehaving ghosts."

Lewis' eyes grew wide, reaching his hands out to her only to find them repelled by an invisible wall, her skin just out of reach as he strained against the powers surrounding him like a toddler eager to be picked up, "But...but, Vivi, I need to be close to you or else-"

"As in the words of your grandmother, 'a trap can temporarily replace the need of a tether,' if necessary, and I find this instance to be very necessary indeed." She proudly quotes, seeing right through his trick and flaunting her knowledge as she slipped on a pair of shoes and prepared to head to the lobby, "I'll only be gone a little bit, and I think we both need some time to cool off. When I get back, be ready to listen and listen well. We're not leaving this motel until we have the truth in order."

"Vivi, no, you can't do this!" He cried out, his hands pressed against the invisible wall separating him from her like a starving child peering into the stainless glass of a candy shop window, but she was already opening the door and exiting the room when his words reached her. She could hear him halfway down the hall as she walked out, wailing and shouting in both anger and desperation her name and the killing words, 'come back!'

* * *

"Good, I didn't know if you were coming or not. I grabbed you whatever I could find, they're closing the breakfast down soon."

Arthur was sitting solitary next to the only window in the petite dining area-if you could really even call it that-surrounded by a handful of messy, tired looking travelers. In the middle of nowhere there seemed to be at least a little traffic, and the tables surrounding Arthur boasted a mother and daughter chattering loudly about their travels over coffee, a young man reading the newspaper upside down as he tried to catch the eye of another, and an elderly couple smiling serenely above a bagel and tea. It was pleasant if quiet, but Vivi was on edge and the plate full of week old donuts-a special treat for the two investigators-did not seem very appetizing.

Quickly and as inconspicuously as he could, Arthur was wrapping bagels and donuts and all sorts of muffins into a thin plastic wrap to take with the two on the road. By refusing many of the better paying and therefore more dangerous ghost hunting jobs, the Mystery Skulls had often had to cut corners and pinch pennies to make ends meet and fill bellies, but despite Vivi's hunger she couldn't even look at the stale feast in front of her let alone take a bite. She tried desperately to find a little tick of hunger, a sign of appetite, and yet she was absolutely disgusted by what was in front of her despite its fairly fresh appearance. Without much thought, she tossed the donut around a few times on the plate before settling on a few sips of lukewarm tea, finding that satisfying enough.

More worrying then the ruckus from inside her motel room or the quickness and nervousness in her shouts from earlier, never had Arthur seen Vivi give up a meal, especially a sugary one. She had more energy than every solar panel in the world, and to fuel that she could scarf down the share of a football team without so much as a blink. Come to think of it, Arthur had never in his life found Vivi wake so early in the morning without him having to shake her to consciousness; something was wrong, very wrong, and all his attention shifted to her in an attempt to fix it.

"Vivi, is everything okay?" He began hopefully, but then his mind corrected him and he grew critical of himself, looking down at his hands as he clasped them together on the table with a loud clap. The metal was slow to wrap around his good hand, but Arthur was used to the numb, delayed reaction by now, "No, never mind, nothing's okay. And that's why I wanted you down here in the first place. I need to apologize to you, and I need to tell you the full truth. One hundred percent, in all its entirety, I must be honest with you."

Vivi, startled by the sudden noise from Arthur, felt her eyes grow wide as she looked up to shake her head. Her words were gulped back into her dry throat, sandpapery and thin and tinged with just the slightest hint of dread, "It's alright, Arthur, you don't have to-"

"Uh-uh, the last time you told me it was alright and I didn't have to tell you right away, we got ourselves into this mess. I stayed up all night thinking about it, Viv, and how I've been acting-hiding things, keeping you in the dark, getting so aggressive and angry at the drop of a hat...you don't deserve any of it." He licked his lips quickly, glancing to the side so that he could keep his eyes away from hers and the steady stare she kept with him, "I value our friendship, I value what you mean to me. The way I've been is just not acceptable when you're the only one I got."

"Arty, it's fine, I-"

"Just hear me out!" His voice was raising, grabbing the attention of the mother-daughter duo at the table nearest to them before he began to quiet ever so slightly, growing embarrassed as eyes turned to look his way confusedly, "I mean, Viv, you trusted me with so much. The least I can do is tell you the whole truth, it's something you deserve to know."

"Art-"

He was choking up now, his throat thick with a mixture of phlegm and remorse as he hung his head lower and towards the table, his voice growing smaller and smaller with each dying word from his mouth. To Arthur, this was his world falling down around him, the walls to his castle crumbling and filling up the moat, and he only hoped he would look back up to find loving eyes and an understanding smile instead of startled surprise and hatred, "Vivi, you were right, I did know that ghost in the mansion. I knew him because there used to be four Mystery Skulls. You, me, Mystery, and...and..." He was almost in tears now, so quick to upset with the memories of a purple-haired specter taking place of a team mate, "and Lewis." He gulped in an attempt to clear his throat, but to no avail. He continued on with his eyes still hidden from her view, "You...you loved him very much, and I...I...when he...I took you loss of memory as a blessing, I thought it meant you simply weren't supposed to know, because at the cave..."

Arthur was no more than a blubbering mess now, all the fear from years of hiding his terrible secret rushing forth in a gush of sobs, the waterfall breaking free of the dam and washing over him without mercy. People were definitely staring now as the man with the robotic arm held his head and cried out incoherent words of apology. His muffin was no more than a dirty sponge now, his shoulders shaking and hunched over the table as he tried to hide his face in the food on his lap. He fell silent save the hiccups, alone and isolated at one end of the table, an island in the vast sea. But he forgot that he wasn't entirely by himself in the lobby. With a searching hand, Vivi found his living arm and gripped his fingers tightly.

"Arthur...I know." She whispered, squeezing his hand in an attempt to calm him down and comfort his sniffling tears to silence, "I remember Lewis, and the cave, and I remember him falling from the cliff and into the fog. You don't have to relive it anymore, I'm here and I remember. It's all over."

He was silent now, his amber eyes slowly lifting to look up into her skies as his glistened red with tears, so brilliant and shining and wet with tears. He was stunned to say the least, those same eyes wide and confused and trembling, but then as he came to absorb her words his shoulders slackened and he came to accept this sudden turn of events, her knowledge of something she couldn't possibly know. He was relieved that he didn't have to say in full what he had done, he didn't have to go over the details for a hundredth time with her already aware, but that brought up another problem. Arthur grew tense once more, growing worried at the implications that she remembered what he had done, that he had pushed Lewis from the cliff and ended his life. Vivi knew, and that made him more anxious than anything in the world.

He hadn't noticed that Vivi had stood up, swinging around the table with a wide step to pull Arthur from his chair without warning. She gripped his hand like an iron glove and lifted him to his feet, breakfast and all, "Follow me, I'll explain everything. I'll show you everything." She exhaled, her voice quiet and breathy as they walked down the hall at a quick pace. Her strides were hard to keep up with despite the shortness of her chubby legs, and Arthur was forced to walk quicker than he was used to for a casual walk. They twisted and turned through the hallways like a labyrinth, weaving between doors and rotting wooden pillars, finally coming up to her door and into something horrible. Arthur was by her side and she had even grabbed the door handle in her hand with a vicious sort of expectation, a full understanding of what was to come and the pain of knowing digging deep into her very soul. She knew what was on the other side full well, and that whatever happened would most definitely be very dangerous and deadly if her ward was defective in any way.

"Vivi, what's going on? Why are you shaking like that?"

She licked her lips before biting them, her eyes shaded by her thick hair and her free hand still gripping Arthur without sign of letting go. "Because," she stuttered, holding her best friend just a little tighter as though their closeness might protect him from what was to come, "reunions were never my strong point."

Maybe it was the fear in the eyes of a woman without worry, or the gentle trembling of her strong hands as they suffocated his hand, but Arthur knew what was coming and what was going to happen before the door was opened before him. If he had screamed, neither heard it over the pumping of blood through their ears, the pulse of their bodies louder than the bass drum of their hearts. She threw him in and followed close behind, hoping against all hope that maybe this would work itself out, that everything would be fine and the trap would work like a charm and she could get both parties to listen, but there was a dying in her chest that came with the bursting of light from inside the motel room, and she knew deeply that it wasn't going to work out that smoothly.

There was only terror in Arthur's amber eyes now, only the abhorrence of death and the fear that came with the inability to accept it. He was trying so hard to claw around Vivi, finding even his immense trust in her wavering as the door closed behind the blue girl and came to a close with the chair barring it from his access, her legs crossed as she sat down and he found no way out. There was only one way to go, in, and in the words of the girl he found so often putting him in danger, he was too far in to turn around now.

And so he did turn around to come face to face with the daydreaming tiger. Lewis had been waiting for Vivi with legs crossed and arms resting daintily on top of them, but upon seeing his murderer he rose to roar with the stripes of revenge painting him pink. An instant was all it took to go from hopeful and patient to vicious and enraged, and it was clear to Arthur that this tiger had been starved, deprived of his most basic needs. The caged feline was bloodthirsty, and the frightened bird within reach of his elongated claws was a good enough snack for now.


	18. A Game of Grey

Chapter 18: A Game of Grey

"Vivi, why are you doing this? Get me out of here, please, just let me go..."

He was strained as far against her leg and the door as he could possibly go, unable to stand as his legs failed him and his heart ran so fast it didn't beat at all. His eyes were the size of moons and his body was trembling like the feeble and ghostly light from it, searching the room frantically for a way out and finding nothing but the inevitability of a sure death, a drawn out sentence of pain followed by a long execution as payment for his many sins. Arthur knew deep down that he deserved whatever was coming for him, he understood why Vivi had handed him over to his absolute and terrible demise, but his eyes still stung all the same from her betrayal and the quickness with which she threw him under the custody of a vengeful ghost. When he had admitted his guilt, he must have simply mistaken the acceptance in her gaze for forgiveness, and how wrong he had been.

"Please, Vivi, if you let me go I'll never bother you again, I'll leave you two be, just let me live. I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry Vivi..."

The ghost was pressed up against the restraining ward with his hands pushing hard against the invisible glass separating him from the other two, his hair flaring and alive like a bonfire and his eyes burning and brighter than ever they had been. Under his breath he swore vulgarly, his voice caught like a curse around Arthur's name as it rolled around with the countless, unspeakable terms of growing distaste, threats bouncing from the spirit and reaching the ears of Vivi and his prey with frustrated and agitated sparks. There was a fire in the room, a nearly tangible flame consuming the space between Lewis and Arthur, and even if the orange boy had fueled it in the first place it was the ghost who set it up with the click of a match on sandpaper.

"Vivi, just let me out of here already! I can almost...I just need..."

Vivi throughout the entire excursion had stayed eerily calm. Arthur was screaming and Lewis was shouting and she just stood against the door with her arms crossed like a disappointed mother, tapping her toe occasionally as the two pleaded with her, begged her to see their side as true and in turn achieving nothing. It was louder than a train station and yet she did not flinch, it was dangerous and yet her fear of Arthur's death had faded, and before her she saw nothing more than two misguided and slightly murderous five year olds, bickering and whining at her ankles.

"Oh, would you stop that, both of you? Especially you, Lewis, I thought I told you to take some time and think about this," she scolded, turning to the trapped ghost as he stopped pounding against the ward and his voice fell silent, "I told you when I left to be ready to listen, and that we won't be leaving until this whole situation is situated. I have both of you here, now figure it out like adults."

Lewis felt a pulse of heat burst through his head, sizzling like the hissing of a cat as he clenched his fists tighter, venom filling his voice and tainting his words, "Did you not see what happened to me, Vivi? Did you not notice him pushing me off a fucking cliff? Or did that just kind of fly over your head?" He let his fist pound once again against the ward, a satisfying boom echoing through the silent motel room, "He doesn't deserve to be listened to! All he deserves is to be burned to a crisp, to feel the same pain I felt when I was falling if not more. He's the one who should be a ghost, not me!

Vivi shook her head, clearly not taking Lewis' orders as even a suggestion, "No one deserves to be dead, not like this. Either you sit and settle down or I'll find something in your grandmother's books to make you." Her voice was commanding, conquering all of the room like a drill sergeant and forcing itself to be heard, "Neither of you are leaving until I am satisfied with our talk. That means you don't get to leave your ward and Arthur doesn't get to escape from this room, capisce? You will at least try to talk about what happened, and if you don't...well, I'll make you."

Arthur gulped, his voice dry and cracked as it tried to speak, no more than a whisper in loudness yet even more trembling and terrified than any whisper could possibly be, "I'll talk if it gets me out of here, just please don't let him go before then, Vivi, he'll kill me. He wants to so bad, and this time he won't miss his shot, and...and..."

"It's alright, Arthur," her voice had grown quiet now, softer as he agreed to her demands with shaking skin and teary eyes, "I won't let him hurt you. You'll be safe with me, I promise."

Vivi's hands crept down to cover Arthur protectively for a few moments, and she could feel his trembling lessen and the tension in his stiff body give way as he leaned against her for support now rather than fear. She held his good hand in hers, lightly, gently, and waited for their eyes to meet as he searched for reassurance. Those amber eyes, moments before filled with lost trust and dying hope torn to pieces before his very fragile heart, had filled so quickly again with the realization that she had not forsaken him, that Vivi was still a loyal friend. Vivi twice had put her own life in danger for Arthur's sake now-he could trust her in this instance, he knew that now with her so close to him and the two of them both so far from the enraged companion who threatened him again.

Lewis was sputtering now as his lover showed sympathy to his murderer, watching as she held Arthur's hand and feeling even more rage fill his hollow bones with heat and energy as he took a step backwards in surprise, "Are you serious, Vivi?" he cried out, knitting his eyebrows in angry confusion before pulling his head down in angry hatred, "I don't think you're feeling the weight of the situation exactly: he killed me. This isn't some minor offense or petty argument, he took my life, stabbed me in the back, pushed me off a fucking cliff! I had siblings, parents, dreams, hopes, and they are all gone because of his greed!" Even as his voice reached its climax and his shouts were raised even higher into the nearly abandoned motel, he looked away, feeling his passion grow too great and trying to curb it away from Vivi if even only in the slightest, "Vivi, I wanted to marry you. I wanted to take you back home to our old town once we got tired of ghost hunting and take over my Dad's restaurant when he got old, maybe even start a family of my own, surrounded by everyone I love. I wanted so bad to simply live, to achieve the things I strove for, and they were all taken away from me. When I was happiest, when I was at the height of my joy, he pushed me in the most literal sense! How can you look at that and still see a friend, how can you comfort him and...and..."

His voice faded away, his gaze still to the side and away from her but his presence directed entirely at Vivi as he landed heavily into the chair close behind him. It was noiseless, silent, the thin walls of the room only faintly implying the noise of a vacuum cleaner working in the far distance. The pain on his face etched dents into Lewis' bony skull, turning his eyes downward and his flaming head to a calming halt as he began to solidify the flame, as he began to settle down slightly with his burning tangent ending. Vivi too had turned soft once more, feeling the pain of the room heavy upon her shoulders. He needed this silence to absorb and prepare, he needed this silence to reflect and repair, but all silence must meet their end eventually. She straightened herself with the soft rustling of fabric accentuating and making even smaller her fine words, not wanting to speak but feeling herself obligated.

"Lewis, even if that's true, there's more to it than just that. This picture isn't black and white, this trial isn't right and wrong-there are many shades of grey, and there are many stories to tell. Please, just listen to his."

There wasn't even a moment of pause before Lewis whipped around, furious once more though his eyes had grown wet with tears and his voice was crackling with the nasty lump that jumped to his phantom throat, rendering him to sound no more controlled than a toddler as he yelled, "There's nothing he can say that can change my mind, Vivi, he's a murderer, a traitor, a-"

"Listen to me then, and give him a chance!"

"No!" Arthur shouted, surprising the two and even shocking himself a little as he finally lifted his voice above a sickly whimper. He was tense again, his own fists clenched against the carpet on the ground and his eyes closed with the courage it took to speak up against the ghost who wanted him dead. He looked up then, meeting Vivi's eyes with a sense of acceptance, almost as though he had played through this dreaded scene a thousand times in his guilty head, "Vivi, he's right. I don't deserve to be listened to, I don't deserve a fair trial, I...I don't deserve anything, and Lewis doesn't owe me the time. I betrayed you and your trust by lying to you all this time, by...by pushing him off the cliff in the first place." His face fell back towards his hands with his voice small and his metal fingers intertwined with his living ones, "I am wrong. I am guilty. I don't deserve redemption, but most of all I don't deserve you. Just get in the van with Lewis and Mystery and drive, leave me here, ditch me. That's what I deserve, to be totally and utterly alone."

Lewis scoffed a little, surprised but not necessarily disappointed by the sudden words of his killer, "At least we can agree on something. Vivi, he doesn't want to be heard! He knows he's guilty, why don't I just put him out of his misery?" He had crossed his arms, one hand lifted matter-of-factly as Arthur gave him the fuel he needed, "It will give me peace, it will give me revenge, and it will keep you safe. If he could stab me in the back so easily after traveling for so long together, what's keeping him from hurting you? A few years? What's preventing him from killing you like he did me, even?"

Those words were filled with so much scorn, hatred with the power to leave Arthur breathless against the wall and feeling as small as an ant from his place on the floor. Then he looked up at Vivi, wondering to himself if maybe that was true. Never in Arthur's life had he thought of hurting her in any way, never had he wanted to make her unhappy or sad or even just uncomfortable-hell, the past two years had been spent on his best attempt to keep her safe. But was he, in some way, hurting her? Was he truly as much of a danger to her as he had been to Lewis, and would his presence lead to her demise? The boy gulped with his face turned away, because he could not look head on into the eyes of whatever truth he found within Lewis' eyes. He could not accept that he was bad for Vivi, because she meant the world to him.

But he had seen something in her eyes when he had looked up just moments ago. Only once had Arthur seen Vivi truly angry, eight years ago on her sixteenth birthday when her deadbeat dad showed up to try and make amends. He knew she was planning on emancipating the moment the clock hit 7:24 PM that night and, not wanting her to cut all ties with him completely, he had hoped to make things better between the two of them after a record year and a half away from home. When he walked through the door that afternoon, her eyes screamed of cold blooded murder and her voice was as quiet as a moonless night and just as cold as a winter blizzard through the North, her words able to freeze the hottest summer child to a stony death with just the biting of her tongue in restraint. When Arthur had looked back at her, his words confirmed and his fears strengthened by the warm phantom, it was that same anger that he saw in her eyes. Years on the streets had taught her control lest she be shot, ages by herself gave her restraint lest she chase away the only ones who stayed, but she was losing both now as their words wore her thin. With the terrifying power of swelling rage he could feel the room grow several degrees colder in response to her sudden change of character, her transition into an entirely different person. Lewis hadn't yet noticed the slits her eyes had become or the whiteness of her knuckles, the cheeriness of his love turning to deadly wrath as she stared him down and slowly became even more tense with animosity. Her entire existence was devoted now to that commanding grace she had so often hidden, the overwhelming air of demanding brilliance, that even when Lewis did look he shut his mouth and watched her with full attention. Arthur backed off slightly, giving her whatever space he could as she froze the space around them.

"You two don't have a choice. Arthur will tell his side of the story. Lewis will listen. Both of you will comply whether you think you deserve a voice or not, whether you hate each other or not. There is no second choice." She was stiff as a board, her head turning to Arthur slowly and steadily as the two boys' eyes grew wide with fear, "Arthur, go ahead. Tell me what you were going to say out in the lobby, tell me the truth. And for fuck's sake, don't try and lie to get you or Lewis out of trouble, you know damn well you couldn't lie to save your own life."

Arthur's eyes flashed between her and Lewis like a child trapped between warring parents, unsure whether or not he should listen to the murderous skeleton across the room and safely warded of his furious best friend, right next to his vulnerable and fragile body. Either way, he was likely to end up dead, be it physically or emotionally. It wasn't even a competition to him, and with eyes closed he felt rather than heard his trembling voice leave his throat in an escape of breath.

"You saw it happen, didn't you? We entered the cave, we went to the cliff, and then-"

"Give me the details, Arthur. The whole truth."

He glanced only momentarily at Lewis as Vivi coaxed him for more, a shiver running wildly through his body as the ghost sunk into his chair irritably in preparation for the story ahead. His voice hinged on these last words, holding out the syllable a little longer before letting it die out in a sizzle and into the next phrase, "Well, you remember what it was like, right? You and Lewis, the two of you were inseparable. I think...I think you guys thought you were being sneaky about it, like everything was just like it had been before you two totally fell for each other, but...you began leaving me behind. I'd wake up in the middle of the night in the motels and I'd be all alone save Mystery, you two would sit there and talk in the front seats about ghosts and things I couldn't relate to, things I couldn't understand; and then you started to forget about our time together, like the Friday meals. I know it's such a petty thing, but those alone meant the world to me, Vivi." He looked away, his jaw clenched noticeably as he stared at the closed blinds of the window, "I was jealous. I was lonely. I wanted nothing more than to be included, but every time I brought it up you got mad at me. You said that I was getting bent over nothing, that everything was fine and I was being too possessive, but it wasn't like that for me. I liked Lewis, Viv, don't get me wrong-in a way, I needed someone else in my life, someone who I could talk to and joke around with just as I did with you, but who I could pull advice from when I got down or when we weren't doing so great-but I wanted him gone. I wished more than anything that I would wake up one morning and he'd have disappeared, because as long as he was there, I had to share more of you than I could handle. You were no longer my friend-you were our friend."

"And so he pushed me off of a cliff. End of story." Lewis interrupted, but Vivi shot her daggers at him with killing aim and he sat back down with a huff, looking away and refusing eye contact with Arthur. The ginger lifted his robotic arm to run a hand through his hair, inhaling deeply as he prepared himself to go on.

"No that's...that's not it. I never wanted to kill you, Lewis, I just wanted you to go home. I wanted you to grow tired of ghost hunting so that I could have my best friend back, or maybe find that you had to go home to help out with the family business or something, but I never wanted you dead. You see, we came up to the cave and you know how it was, Vivi wanted to go in like always and so we did, me terrified and the two of you jabbering away about how interesting the bats were or something to that effect. I tried to bring up how dangerous it was, the bones all over the floor, the glowing green eyes of all the living shadows, and yet you guys brushed me off as just what I was: a coward. Vivi wanted to go forward, I wanted to go back, and Lewis was too enamored by his lady friend to care." His good hand lifted up to rub his robotic shoulder gingerly, almost as though he could feel the pain from within the cave in those moments, "We split up because of the fork in the path. You went down and I followed Lewis up, but something was...off. My arm was hurting really bad, and I had that sinking feeling in my gut like something bad was going to happen. I tried to tell you, Lewis, I asked you to leave with me, to get out of here, but the view was too nice and you didn't want to listen. And then...and then..."

He felt Vivi's hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see her stone eyes softening and supporting. There was a worried smile on her lips, somewhat strained as though she were trying her best to let go of her earlier rage. He was waiting, pausing on the bad memories to try and put them into words but not quite finding a way with the burning of his eyes and the thickness in his throat, and yet he found her presence soothing now, knowing she had stuck by him so long without abhorrence to stain her bright eyes. How quickly she had changed, how fluid she had grown with the expression of emotion on her face, "It's alright, Arthur. You can do it. Tell us, what happened next."

And so he gulped away that troubling lump and nodded to her, knowing he had to finish this story without leaving it on such a neutral note, "And then I felt something eating at the edge of my mind There were...angry words, a voice telling me that...that I was better than Lewis, that he made a fool out of me, that you'd still rely on me without him there to make me seem worthless. I tried my hardest, Vivi, I swear to god I did, but..." he felt his eyes sting with salt and he closed them best he could to deter the tears, biting his bottom lip hard and clenching the tender inside of his good palm out of habit, "but those words kept coming back. I told them that Lewis was my friend, that you needed someone like him, but as I fought they took me over. I don't know what was in that fog, what monster it was or why, but all I could see was my hand lifted in front of me. It was green, like the fog, it was green and no longer mine to control. I tried so hard...I tried to call out your name, Lewis, to warn you, but my face was numb and the whole left side of my body was taken away from me and I couldn't even...I could only call out your name when it was too late. I was running, and screaming to you, and you were falling, and I was..I was..."

He took another moment to compose himself, the tears running down his face without a sob to accompany them, silent and quick as they sprinted down his cheeks only to fall onto the rough carpet beneath him. Vivi's hand squeezed, a comfort he needed, and with one final breath he continued on.

"I was still trying to fight it best I could because whatever monster was inside me knew you were there too, Vivi, and it wanted your blood. I tried to follow Lewis off the cliff, tried to bring my own life to an end with the hopes that whatever was inside me would die too, but my vision was cut off and I was...I was totally and utterly possessed. I heard something growling, something else in the fog, something big with re eyes and sharp teeth. It ripped my arm clean off, and then I fell and hit my head on a rock and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital." He finally looked back up into Vivi's eyes, but couldn't handle the empathy within them and found a wave of tears continuing down his face.

Lewis stared at the ground in astonishment, his hair calmed and his eyes dulling as he fully absorbed Arthur's words. In his fury and bloodlust, in the haze he had bee left in after death, Lewis hadn't really though of any alternative to Arthur simply being a treacherous and horrible man, but as all the pieces came together he felt his own anger ebb away with the pull of a tide. Lewis could remember Arthur's fear, his clear desire to be out of the cave, even his whining over the incredible burning in his arm that Lewis chalked up to be no more than a pesky cramp. Even evident in the screaming of his name, what he had immediately assumed and seen as an act of malice and scorn turned slowly into a call of warning, a cry to save and mourn rather than condemn and taunt. His head fell to his hands in a form of woeful defeat, elbows rested on his knees. Was his death truly more than cold blood and sin, had he been wrong the entire time, and was Lewis truly the bad guy after chasing an innocent man with thoughts on the grave?

"No...Vivi, this isn't...he must be..."

I swear that's the truth, Vivi. I wasn't able to control my envy, I wasn't strong enough to fight my own thoughts when the monster turned it against me and...and that killed Lewis. I killed Lewis, it's all my fault, I should have been stronger." Arthur interjected, choking on the loudness of his words as the crackling within them was hardly concealed. As he finished, as he concluded his bits of honesty, he doubled over himself with regret. This was what Vivi remembered, the guilt that opened the flood gates and swept her best friend up in a flood that reduced him to no more than a sniffling mess of wet cheeks and runny noses. Her knees buckled beneath her and she folded her legs below her torso so that she might envelop Arthur in a full hug, he warmth surrounding him entirely. She had feared he would be all that Lewis claimed, that her best friend was so possessive that he was willing to kill in order to keep her, and yet he was so riddled with remorse now that she doubted he had ever had it in him to even swat at a fly let alone murder his only other friend. He was still her Arty, her brother, and as Lewis tried to rationalize Arthur still being evil she was more than busy trying to calm her tearful ginger down.

"It can't be true, he's lying, I know it! He's just trying to displace the guilt, he's just making himself out to be the victim so that you sympathize, that can't be the truth! Don't you think that, if there had really been a demon in the cave, I would have sensed it once I came back from the dead? I lived there for two years, right above my deathbed. He's lying to you, Vivi, and you're falling for it!"

He pointed an accusatory finger, but Lewis could feel his argument falter and drift away before it even left his lips. Part of him could see on the clear and unmuddied face of Arthur that everything he said was fact, his brain seconding those feelings, but his heart still held onto the dying rage and wasn't planning on letting go anytime soon. He had been brought back to life by his hatred before his love, he had risen from the cave to claim Arthur's life, how could the basis of his existence be a lie? Lewis couldn't accept it, wouldn't take the veracity of his words, and so he was met once again with the cold gaze of Vivi and that sinking sensation of her fully forsaking him in those moments.

Arthur had recoiled at Lewis' extended finger, hiding his face from Lewis in the softness of Vivi's sweater as he continued to cry loudly now. Having laid his down his heart and soul, after exposing his deepest and darkest vulnerabilities and secrets, it took too much for the ginger to retain any control. He had been torn down, denied the legitimacy of his pure words, and with every added hiccup and sniffle he could feel Vivi grow to immense and terrible heights. She wasn't taking Lewis' repudiation very well, and as he continued on in vain, she rose to her feet with a protective hand placed over Arthur.

"Come on, Vivi, look at him. He even admitted that it was his fault, that he deserves whatever comes to him! What innocent man judges himself guilty? Who condemns them self when they have no regrets to pay for? He;s dangerous. He's traitorous. He's-"

"Shut up!"

She screamed it, the top of her lungs not good enough as her voice rang out like police siren. Lewis blanched, stepping back and tripping over the armchair as she began to approach him, short legs quick and arms sweeping as she veered to the side of the ward and slammed her hands down hard on the little desk at the end of her bed, diverting her physical anger onto the old and dirty wood. Her entire body bristled, the hair on her arms raised and tingling in excited response, her shoulders raised like hackles as she bore her teeth into the mirror in front of her, poorly adorned and falling apart. She could sense Lewis preparing to speak again in response, but she wasn't ready to listen with the metal still on her tongue. Her nails dug into the soft wood beneath, and as his voice began tiny and unsure, she swung around with her eyes a tumultuous ocean and body held ferally, no longer woman but wild beast.

"Shut your fucking mouth, I don't want to hear your voice. I don't even want to look at you. Just...stop it, Lewis. Just stop."

Vivi had never yelled at him, especially like this. He wasn't used to the anger of the joyful summer child, her mind forever floating on the sunny pools of a California scorcher, unaccustomed to her hatred when she had so often drowned all she knew and loved in smiles and kindness. It was shocking and utterly debilitating, the fury of a generous and passive woman, and Lewis wasn't sure he liked it at all. Slowly he could feel his stunned silence fill with a new form of anger, a bitterness towards the one he loved, a biting and fierce response to her blatant disrespect and unwillingness to hear his words. Why was she angry at him, the dead man, her betrayed teammate? He felt his own eyes squint, glaring at her as she bent back over the desk and began to shake her head with hair hanging down limply around her. His own fists clenching the arm of the seat beneath him hard, he could feel his heart burst with a scornful passion, "Vivi, you have a choice."

She didn't even look over at him, the pausing of her swinging head the only sign that she had even heard him as it halted and posed still over the desk. She didn't say a word, but Lewis could feel her attention on him like a scorching ray of limelight even if he lacked the vocal cues.

"It's all up to you. Either you can take his words for truth and drive off into the sunset with my murderer and pretend I never existed, just as you did before, faking that Arthur never hurt a soul and is some innocent sunflower without a seed of darkness or guilt and leave me behind to waste away in my mansion, all alone, or we can head up a different path. You can come with me. Vivi, you and I could make a new life, we could find a way to survive even if I'm like this, we can be happy together. But you can't have both of us, not like this." He was callous, his voice monotone and listless as it floated to her ears, "A traitor, or a lover. It's your choice, no one else's."

It didn't take much of thought on Vivi's part, really, and as she pushed herself up and away from the desk her heavy feet pulled her steadily along like a deadly march on snare, all the way back to Arthur. As she had told him many times before, this situation wasn't black and white, wrong or right, loyal or traitor, it was a game of grey. She thought back to Lewis' wintry denouncement of anyone who murdered someone innocently, his inability to see the grey and the accidents and exceptions that came with such a touchy topic as death. She thought of his unwillingness to listen, his abhorrence of an open mind and his stubbornness when faced with a likely alternative, and then she looked at Arthur. He had accepted her throughout her life for what she was, he had been gifted her truths and had in turn deemed her good, had looked upon her shadows and called them blindingly bright, and trusted her even when she forced him to spill his guts to a vengeful spirit thirsty for blood. He had been possessed, he had been guilty, and Vivi wasn't about to overlook the honesty within his eyes. Wings thrown back and halo shining, Vivi faced Lewis defiantly with her answer apparent on her body.

"Each and every time, I will choose Arthur."

The ginger let out a breath he hadn't noticed he had been holding in the first place, releasing his anxieties as she protected him from the judging glare of Lewis once more. He could hear the ghost sputter, eyes widening before they were forced shut tightly in angry silence and burning treachery when faced with a scenario he thought impossible, or at the very least unlikely. The ghost looked back up to find the stone cold Vivi tearful yet determined, pain clear on her face as she was torn in two and forced to assign her whole self a loyalty, pressured to claim a side in an argument she felt unjust in the first place.

"Arthur is my brother, Lewis. Before you even glimpsed my heart he was there with fingers wrapped around it, he was by my side, holding my hand and helping me along a path I didn't even think was possible for someone like me. For the scum of the city, the rats in the alley. He knows my darkest caverns, and even if I've done unspeakable things, he has trusted me. No matter what, Arthur looked at me and knew I was worth fighting for." She blinked, letting a rush of river water cascade from her lashes, "I was set for a life of crime and deception and sin, desperation and destruction that you couldn't even know ran so deep in our small town. You wouldn't be able to comprehend the surface of it, Lewis, and he looked at one simple act of kindness and deemed me an angel, a guardian, a savior. For the longest time, he was all I had to rely on."

She paused once more, taking a moment to fully compose herself as her words floated on top of the room. Never could Arthur ever conceive that Vivi had in any way felt as reliant on him as much as he did her, and the words that escaped from her in a deluge of pent up emotion brought a warmth to the edge of his mouth, the beating of his bandaged heart. Even Lewis, so bent on his hatred that he could not see the truth in Arthur's tears, had lowered his head in a sense of understanding, even if that acceptance was pined and laborious.

"I would never expect you to choose me over Perla, or Marisol, or your mother or father. And if you truly love me, you will accept that I will always choose Arthur, each and every time."

She watched Lewis closely now, studying the stillness of the phantom as he absorbed her choice fully, his form slowly fading in and out of existence with her loyalties made clear. Even with his tether so physically close by, with Vivi only feet away from him, he felt as though the two were dimensions apart. He could have been in the realm of ghosts and wouldn't have noticed the difference. His hand rested above his beating heart out of age old habit, his vessel crying out with the picture held and protected within burning the glass and giving him the utmost pain. He felt those last moments as what he truly was, a ghost, and his body began to mimic the loss of heart that came with the acceptance of transparency. His voice, when it finally did rise, was no louder than a wayward feather lost on the tumbling wind.

"...Fine."


	19. To Paint Her Canvas Skin

Chapter 19: To Paint Her Canvas Skin

To say the least, the playfulness of Vivi's X-Files ringtone didn't exactly fit the scene very well.

It was a splash of neon paint on a somber medieval masterpiece, a patch of rough and worn sandpaper resting among the richest of velvet, and it was something distracting that pulled their attention away from the exhausting, diverted glances and crackling tension surrounding the team. It came to be with the whispering of their arguments paused and their love of each other wavering, forcing Lewis to flare in surprise and Arthur to jump. The soft buzzing of a vibrating phone and the loud and eerie whistling from the old TV show broke their focus and turned them all towards Vivi's overnight bag in shocked curiosity, ripping them from their personal sorrows momentarily to stand transfixed. For some reason, all three of the team members were relieved for the excuse to look away from each other.

Vivi began to rummage through her bag, somewhat embarrassed, throwing cords and games and notepads aside as she searched for the little flip phone inside the abyss of her bag. Arthur glanced up at Lewis, for a moment terrified without Vivi's protection, but found the ghost too lost in thought to even acknowledge the ginger anymore, too focused on the recent outcome of his unfair pressure to glance his way. Clearly, the phantom wasn't feeling so great after the girl he loved had chosen his confirmed murderer over him when given the choice, and Lewis couldn't seem to figure it out in his head. Was it simply a question of if she loved him or not, or did he truly deserve it? Was he being irrational, belligerent, selfish...should he try and listen to the two of them despite him being the victim?

But then, if he had been wrong about Arthur, that meant...

"Hello, Vivi of the Mystery Skulls. How can I help?"

She had found the phone, clearly, nestled and hidden in one of the many side pockets and away from the grabbing of her hands. Flipped open, Lewis could see now that the device she held was their old work phone, the phone number they used for clients and clients only, not the personal phone as he had originally assumed by the ringtone; Vivi must have changed the song when he had been away from the Ghostbuster's theme to what she had now. He wondered what else had changed in the two years that he'd been gone, what other little parts of her life were no longer relatable to his living memories.

"Of course, can you give me any information on the situation whatsoever? Yes, anything helps, even the tiniest details."

She had pulled out her old notepad, pens organized by color to denote which entries within her book were client detail, later research, or hunt summaries. Her hand moved furiously down the page, sloppy handwriting quick to record the information gifted to her, and her little voice muttering in focused confirmation of every little fact. By how much she was writing and how pale she was looking, Arthur and Lewis could only guess that it was quite a gargantuan case that she was taking on. As she continued, Lewis looked away.

What should he do now? Vivi had made her stance clear, showing who she supported blindly and who she didn't trust enough to, who she had to question in order to accept and who she believed to always be honest. He could just go back to the mansion, he supposed, live out what little life he had left before the pull of the void became too much and he was forced to fall into a restless sleep, a tossing slumber for the rest of eternity. Without his final duty fulfilled, he would never find true peace, but was that what was best for the girl he had partially come back for in the first place, the girl he loved so much, was that what would make her happy in the end? An eternity is a long time to spend alone, and he knew Vivi wouldn't be caught in hell with him.

"Alright, we'll be down in a couple hours. Take care and keep safe until then."

Vivi flipped the phone shut, the snapping of the metal like the breaking of a neck as she turned back towards the two boys waiting patiently for her. She proceeded to cross her arms and lean heavily on one leg, still somewhat lost in thought and trying to maintain her air of authority as she turned back to the unruly boys with a proposition of grave subject. Notepad set down on the beside table and face somewhat upset by the recent chatter, this clearly wasn't going to be your everyday hunt.

"Two bits of information, you two. Do you guys remember those investigators we met when we were just starting out, the sisters who gave us all their spare equipment and who taught us how to read it and stuff?"

"Yeah, the Sydney sisters, right?" Arthur answered back, the picture of the two teens clear in his head after more than a few encounters with the friendly couple. They had been hunting with their father since before they had entered junior high and had been quite talented by the time the Mystery Skulls had met them. Every miniscule piece of information gathered from the two had been put to good use and had saved the team in quite a few instances, Arthur could vouch for that.

"Well, they're dead."

Lewis perked up with this, looking back at Vivi for the first time since she had made her choice, spooked by the prospect of the young and talented womans' deaths. He lifted a hand to cover the back of his head, his flame long out and his skull bare as he shook it lightly back and forth in quick mourning, "What happened?"

Vivi inhaled quickly, "They were called out to take out an angry poltergeist who very promptly set them on fire, along with two other investigation teams. Not a great way to go. And so that brings us to my next bit of information, something neither of you are going to like very much."

Arthur could feel what was coming long before she said anything, standing up shakily like a fawn on newborn legs. He knew that look on the face of the girl he had chosen to grow up with, and how could she possible turn down an opportunity when many others had failed? He could feel himself shiver as he imagined every path this day could take, "Dear god, Vivi, what did you get us into?"

"Not what I got us into. What I got myself into."

Arthur was flushed, his eyes closed and his teeth clenched as Lewis began to catch onto what she was trying to say, what she was implying to the two. He looked back at her with his thoughts towards the dead banished, hoping he could convince her not to join them anytime soon, "Vivi, you couldn't possibly mean..."

"Yes, I do mean. Our client has called upon us last of many to dismiss an ages old poltergeist. Apparently, all the other teams they have called have tried and failed to calm down the spirit, but it has the nasty habit of fatally wounding them, usually in the form of fire. I'm going, no matter what you two say." She was still practicing her control over the two boys, taking control and holding on tight without any room to wiggle out, her voice a brick wall while Arthur and Lewis lacked a cannon, "You gave me a choice, Lewis, and now I give you two a fork in the path. Either both of you can come with me, or neither. I will only let you in the van with me if if both of you are in agreement to tolerate each other, and only then. Otherwise, I'm doing this all by myself."

Arthur shook his head, eyes wide as he turned back towards her frantically, "More than one team-as in multiple people-have died trying to calm down this poltergeist. You'll get yourself killed on the spot, Vivi! Is that what you want, a good old suicide mission to bring the team back together again?"

"No." She was still stern, still terrifying, "Do you know what I want? My two best friends back, not these wimps who replaced them. But the two of you are too wrapped up in yourselves to even try and attempt that, so I'm turning drastic, dangerous. If that's the only way to get you both to agree on something, then so be it."

She was tossing things into her bag now, leaving only her notepad and a few pens out as she began shuffling through the belongings she had left out in the motel. Lewis watched her very closely, feeling his own heart tremble just as Arthur was against the door, "Vivi, this is not in anyway a good idea. The Sydney sisters were raised on ghost hunting, and I'm sure the other teams were just as experienced as well-we're babies compared to them! Even with Arthur and I, this might be a little outside of our skill level. You'll just end up getting both of you killed."

Her hands still moved in and out of the bag, her head down as she continued to pick up around the motel, "I'm going, and that's final." Vivi's feet found their way to Lewis, her toes just barely outside of the ward as she looked up at him expectantedly, "Now, I'll let you both out. I want you to remember that if you hurt Arthur in any way, you will never see me again, Lewis. I will break the tether on my palms and let you go back to the mansion and never show my face again if you even think about putting him in a situation that will endanger him." Her foot ran across the chalk of the ward, and it began to fade in the carpet until it was eventually gone, "And then all three of us will be alone and miserable. Are you coming or not?"

Lewis, not surprised, took a tender step out of his ward, testing the air outside gently with a swipe of his hands before he let himself truly be free, "Vivi, I have to go. So long as we're far far from the mansion and you have that sharpie on your palms, I have to be nearby you. Otherwise, I think I'll fade away for good."

She had her back turned to him in order to keep their eyes from meeting, knowing that her stubborness would falter the moment she let him gaze upon her head on. Her eyes instead met Arthur's, observing him closely, "Well, then, you better hope our friend Arthur here wants to go, too, or else we'll be making a quick stop at the mansion, now won't we?"

Nobody spoke, nobody moved, it was still within the room as Arthur looked at the two like a deer in the headlights choosing between the car barreling towards them and an endless pit. This was an angry poltergeist they were talking about right now, not some confused spirit who took a wrong turn on his way to the light; poltergeists killed,and Arthur had just about enough fear of death to last him for more than a lifetime. He looked at Lewis, his eyes pleading him in a sort of begrudging way, knowing he would be separated from Vivi otherwise. Speaking of Vivi, the way she was glaring at him wasn't exactly inviting: she looked just about ready to shoot both of them and whatever other poor souls that got in her way, something he wasn't exactly looking forward to. Once again, Arthur's choices weren't exactly orthodox or easy.

She opened the door then, walking over briskly as she no longer waited for an answer from her best friend as she fished the keys out of her bag and began to leave towards the parking lot and the van. It took Arthur a moment to notice that she was preparing to leave him behind, and by the time he reached out to stop her she already had a foot out the door, "Vivi, wait!"

"Arthur, you can't convince me otherwise. I'm going, with or without you-"

"With." He finally groaned, loud and low and slow, his grip on her arm tightening with the words before he began to straighten himself out, the wrinkles in his favorite vest worrying, "Just give me a moment to pack my stuff, I kind of made a mess last night, what with me not sleeping."

Now, she had that big smile again, her face turning soft and mushy as she was given what she wanted, the entirety of what she had asked for slowly and surely coming together. The corners of her eyes softened, and her body began to relax underneath the grip of her best friend. She gave him a slight nod of approval and acceptance, and the three began to head towards Arthur's room.

Upon opening the door to Arthur's motel room, Mystery came bursting through like a bat fresh out of hell. There was a flurry of fur as he tried to jump up and onto both Arthur and Vivi simultaneously, whining the entire time as a balloon allowed only a small and steady stream of air to escape from its mouth with both excitement and frustration as his owners came back. They were quite a few hours late in his opinion, and he never really liked being alone in the first place despite the regular necessity of it. Vivi could tell he felt left out whenever they had to leave him in the motel room to grab breakfast or in the van to meet or treat clients who were allergic or scared, and she hated leaving him almost as much as the dog hated being left. The little nips he gave the two were a sure sign to Vivi that he wasn't all that happy about it, but every bit of his peeved emotions rolled off once he spotted the skeleton, hidden from his view at first by Vivi.

What began as a whirlwind of angry and thrilled dog quickly turned south, his whines growing silent with only a thin and long growl to fill the air between him and the one he was confronting. His eyes were flashing, bright and red as the dying embers of a campfire, as he took a step towards the dead man. He was clearly shielding Arthur like a guard dog, his body turned side ways and his attention never leaving the pale skull before him in clear memory of the night before. Vivi could swear that she saw some sort of crimson light wrapping tendrils around the dog, darkening the air as she felt him grow slowly bigger and bigger with each feral breath escaping his bared teeth and that killing intuition that her simple pet was becoming so much more. She suddenly realized, breaking free from her transfixed state, that her dog was threatening Lewis, and so she ran towards Mystery with arms raised and waving above her head in an attempt to divert the animal's attention away from the phantom he so clearly distrusted.

"No, Mystery, it's alright! He's not going to try and kill Arthur anymore, buddy, we'll all be fine! You don't have to growl all low and scary like that, not anymore."

The dog took quite some time to tear his eyes away from the spirit in front of him, only glancing briefly back up at the girl before allowing his bristled fur to lie flat and his burning eyes to dull their luster. It wasn't that he couldn't recall or make the connection between this ghost and his third companion years ago, Vivi could see that; he just wanted to protect Arthur, and after the happenings of the night before he certainly wasn't at ease around Lewis. Even with the hackles of the dog lowered, Lewis could feel the eyes of the canine like bullets into the back of his neck, piercing through his bones and into the marrow beneath. In no way or in any instance was he trusted, and he could feel the hostility flashing from the dog like a bright, neon red sign. He doubted the hell he'd have to pay to Vivi's dog and the last member of the Mystery Skulls was worth his revenge in the end.

* * *

"Nuh-uh, only Mystery gets to ride in the front with me. You two, in the back."

Arthur was stopped in his tracks by a pale hand to his good shoulder, five digits wrapping around the puffed up collar of his vest as his forward motion was halted suddenly. After packing up the van in the near empty parking lot surrounding them, the ginger had naturally made his way to the driver's seat with the assumption that he would drive as he almost always did, but that clearly wasn't on the girl's agenda as Vivi continued to micromanage the gang. She gestured with a hand towards the back and Lewis, standing a little ways off and looking at the van longingly before she opened the door to the front and allowed Mystery VIP access. Even if their haunt was only an hour away tops, Arthur could sense that it was going to be a long ride.

Lewis, not even attempting the front seat with the knowledge that Vivi was still more than a little peeved at him, was stunned not by her treatment of Arthur but by what he found in the back of the van. He wasn't so much staring at the vehicle itself as the others assumed, but the interior moreso, his eyes scanning the ruin and wreckage that had become of his old home. Lewis knew that Arthur had always left a mess wherever he went, throwing empty energy drink cans on the floor of their beloved van and claiming to have intentions of picking them up later, but with no real actions on those simple and easy words. With this, Lewis could expect at least a little bit of clutter. But Vivi...she had always been alright with keeping her living spaces tidy and neat, if not as painstakingly so as Lewis. The explosion that was the back of the Mystery Skulls van left Lewis breathless, a pebble damming his throat, and his voice was nearly so high that only Mystery could hear it.

"What...what happened?"

Arthur had already climbed in, stepping over the towering piles of books that dared him to tip them over after somehow, miracuously, not toppling over during the many roadtrips the three had taken in the past, "Oh, this?" Vivi looked back in the rearview mirror, adjusting her glasses and the mirrors to fit her short stature as opposed to Arthur's slightly taller torso, "We kinda let it get out of hand, I know. I was always reading, and Arthur was always driving, and it got cluttereed real fast I guess. Sorry, we can always clean it up."

The skeleton had to look away it disgusted him so much, his old home turned into nothing more than a pigpen, "Jesus, guys, I lived with five siblings who were all younger than me and our house was never as bad as the back of this van. How did you even manage this by yourselves?"

Arthur waved it off, still somewhat rigid as he spoke to the man who wanted his hed on a stake, "It's been two years. 'Lots happened." He kicked his feet up onto a stack of duffel bags, all filled with clothes spilling out. Lewis couldn't tell if they were dirty or clean, but he couldn't imagine they did their laundry very often, either.

Vivi nodded in agreement with Arthur, patting Mystery lazily as she waited for Lewis to get in, "When I started really reading your grandma's books and all the other information we had from before the cave, I put them away and kept everything organized really nicely and consistently. But then, when I'd reread a book and find a passage that connected to something from another book, I'd just have to go back and search through the journals and chapters and notes and find the things I was looking for...before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by a circle of journals! And that was before I started truly translating your grandma's diaries, let me tell you..."

After swallowing that pebble and considering the situation slightly, Lewis braced himself and climbed into the back of the van and onto what little floor he could find peaking out from beneath the second-hand books and granola bar wrappers. If he had a lip, he would have no doubt curled it in disgust, "All of her diaries are in Spanish I thought. Did you take some lessons while I was away?"

She shook her head, starting the car as Lewis finally sat down on a clearing he made on the seat, his wide stature not fitting in so well with the cluttered space surrounding him, "Not exactly. I took it in high school for two years, so I know some conversational, but I was never really good. But what I did have was a Spanish-English dictionary and a lot of determination, not to mention a killing amount of time on my hands."

Her fingers reached down, popping on the radio as she finished her little explanation in the hopes that she'd find something to calm down her still jumping nerves, her fearless soul turning to mush as she continued to ponder the hunt ahead. Lewis watched as a genuine smile crept up onto her face, bobbing her head back and forth as she drove forward steadily onto the freeway beneath them and cleared her mind of the arguments earlier today. Honestly, the most soothing and relaxing thing in the world was driving for Vivi, and she could let go of just about anything so long as she had control of the radio. Arthur, who had been watching Lewis carefully since entering the van, responded to her cue by letting his guard down to grab his 3DS with the intention of shutting out the world around him, and with it, the chance of confrontation with the murderous ghost who was sitting only a seat away from him. Each had found their little voids with which to fill their time with even Mystery curling up to take a nap beside Vivi, and so with nothing else to do, the ghost found his own way to be useful. It may not be the chatter he so fondly remembered, but there was something soothing in tidying up around the van and transforming it back into the home he had once remembered, too.

He was more than a little relieved to find that nothing within the van was toxic or dangerous save Arthur's startling knife collection. It seemed Vivi had kept that up at least, preventing week-old pizza slices from smelling up the whole car or aging breakfast sandwiches from reaching anywhere close to a moldy state with most consumables stored safely in a mini-fridge that was new to the phantom, held steady in the back. Most of the clutter was, as he expected, cans and books with a few articles of clothing scattered around. It was easy enough to organize neatly, and the small space meant there wasn't nearly as much on the floor as he had assumed in the first place-by thirty minutes into their ride, it was nearly spotless with only the remnants of chip crumbs and a couple garbage bags filled to the brim to mark it dirty.

As he stood over his handiwork, relieved and a little bit proud, Vivi began to turn down the radio with the intention of merging off the highway and entering a more urban area, "Hey, could you two maybe search for some info in the books back there on poltergeists? I know about the universal stuff-sage and salt, etcetera-but maybe your grandma had something more specific to help us out?" Vivi asked, beginning to think forward to the hunt, "This one sounded pretty nasty, any upper hand we have will be well needed."

It was reluctantly that Arthur began to power down his game, only just coming to forget of the hunt and the chattering of his teeth that came with it as she brought his nightmares back to light. Lewis, on the other hand, switched from one task to the next flawlessly, only glancing momentarily at Arthur as he set his game to rest on the cushion beside him. The ginger's voice was a groan, but at least he wasn't downright refusing this time.

"You know I'm not a very good researcher, Viv. Any leads for me on choosing the perfect match, book-wise, so I don't waste anymore of our time?"

"Well," Vivi knitted her eyebrows, thinking long and hard as she switched lanes with a flash towards her blind spot, "I think one of the really late journals of Lewis' grandma's had something on a nasty one, number tweny or twenty-one I think? It was a lot later on, in April of...1987, I wanna say? That sounds about right, somewhere around there. Very bad, just like this if I remember. Think you can find it?"

Lewis looked back up at Vivi, wide-eyed,"Geez, V, did you get photographic memory while I was gone? I don't even remember that much detail about her diaries, and I'm her grandson." Lewis butted in playfully, rummaging through one of the boxes filled with journals. To his relief, Vivi had taken very good care of his grandmother's books, and all of them were still in one piece and well organized.

"What can I say, it was the only thing that felt really right to me." She answered back with attention back towards the road and a little grin skirting her cheeks, "Once I lost my memory, those books were like...little peaks into the past, but they weren't forcefed to me by someone else. I was remembering stories and hunts, not having them remembered for me. I must have read each book a hundred times each by now, Isabel-I mean, your grandma-was such an amazing and brave woman. It doesn't even feel like research anymore, it feels like a sotrybook."

Lewis smiled at this, handing Arthur the journal Vivi translated reluctantly while keeping the original for himself. He read Spanish fluently having been raised in a household where it was spoken often; English was technically his second language, anyway. The pages were heavy with text and the cursive was hard to decipher as it was fading and blue upon the yellowing and brittle pages, but he was still able to scan the pages with ease once his eyes adjusted. Just as he always had, Lewis felt that his grandmother's writing was the most beautiful script in the world, and just absorbing her words felt like a peak into the gates of heaven.

"I think I have something here, Vivi. Her twenty-thrid journal, just about the time you said," Lewis, caught by surprise as he found the date he was looking for, began to summarize the text as quickly as he could read and think, "a stage five poltergeist, the worst you can get. Prone to set things on fire, throw knives, and inflict other forms of bodily harm without any objects present."

Vivi could hear Arthur gulp, setting his book down as her grip tightened on the wheel with a rush of pre-adrenaline. That sounded exactly like what they were facing, a copy of the poltergeist explained to her over the phone. She hoped against all hope that there was something there that would help them out if even only a little, "What else? Any hints on how to bring this sucker down?"

Lewis shook his head a little, "The hunt went on for three days, but she was unable to dismiss it and dubbed it too dangerous. This thing made rocks fall out of nowhere, set ten people on fire, and tore a few others to smithereens without any trouble, without even acknowledging her attempts to undermine it. In the end, she covered the house in salt, sage, and gasoline before angering the ghost to the point of setting his own house on fire." He looked back up, his voice a little slower than before as he tried to absorb it himself, "It must have worked, because she put in a sidenote that the new building on the lot afterwards was average enough. I guess the poltergeist learned its lesson, so we have that as a last resort."

Vivi was biting her lip, preoccupied with driving but stil actively worried about the possible outcomes of the hunt ahead. Even Lewis' hatred of Arthur and bits of self-pity had died away with all his attention focused on keeping the job from getting out of hand for fear that he might lose Vivi for good this time, and if he was willing to put that aside, she began to wonder if maybe she should put this crazy flight aside. She was usually so confident in her abilities...would they let her down now?

"V, I understand ghosts a little better now that I am one. Let me tell you, when I tried to cook with salt for the first time and a little bit spilled onto my foot after I died, the pain was so excruciating. It took days for that to wear off, and just a little bit of it was enough to leave a pretty sore spot afterwards. With that being said, after continued exposure to it I could tolerate the pain more and more. It's safe to assume that this poltergeist is older than me, and they've definitely seen more ghost investigation squads than I have; all of which, I assume, have been hostile. And with power, which we know they have, comes a greater resistance to weaknesses such as sage or prayer. The best route for a poltergeist is just to ignore them. Let their attempts at gaining attention go unnoticed. It will drive them crazy, but they'll leave after a decade or so without any real excitement." He was trying his best to lead her away from the hunt, his fears only fueled by his grandmother's recounting of the tale from the guise of a paper journal. In her instanes, two of her brothers-also ghost hunters, also very talented-had been killed in the process of banishing the poltergeist, "This might be something we can do nothing about, and I'd rather not risk you dying over a chance."

She was looking slightly angered again, but it wan't so much at Lewis but at the thought that she was truly second guessing herself. In a war of rationale and curiosity, she felt logic and reason winning, and she honestly didn't like it one bit. Where was the fun in that? She stared at the ghost through the mirror again with Mystery's and Arthur's eyes boring holes into the back of her head, "I've said it before and I'll say it again, Lewis: retreat isn't an option in this case." Eyes back on the road, she tried to convince herself more than anyone else that this was true as she took a deep breath to calm her nerves, "If worse comes to worse, Arthur and I have insurance and the client has agreed to pay for any other damages. If you stop trying to convince me to turn around and start looking for some more useful information yourself, I'll have a lot better chance at living through this, too."

What Lewis didn't see was the turmoil within rolling her around on a tumultous ocean. There were parts of Vivi that wanted to be stubborn and unbending, parts of her that were obstinant and unwavering in their steadfast hold of her, but then the rest was screaming that Lewis was right. More than anything, she was no longer frustrated at her team mates, but at herself for growing so cowardly in the face of danger. Vivi didn't like the feeling of fear that was pushing through her, and she tried her best to straighten herself up as her voice bit back at them.

Lewis, taking Vivi's obstinance for cockiness, could feel himself grow warm with flustered heat. He looked away from her and began reading over the text again, but to no avail save a poltergeist-specific prayer in Latin that he was very unsure of. Nothing made sense, and nothing that he read was in the slightest bit helpful or reassuring, all having been proved by his grandma to be no more than bogus. Even Arthur, tasked with tying the sage and managing the salt with Lewis unable to handle either comfortably, was growing frantic with his quick and sloppy movements leading to quite a bit of salt-covered area that Lewis could not traverse. The poor ginger could feel the tension of Lewis' worry as well as a bloodhound on the trail of an arrogant fox, and he wasn't looking forward to the night ahead one bit. Lewis may have been a stranger to him now, but he remembered from the year they spent together that if Lewis was scared, then he sure as hell should be, too.

That's when they came upon it, a well used house built upon quite a few acres of land and well away from any neighborhood or city yet cautioned off sloppily with yellow tape and warning signs. It couldn't have been very old by its lack of disrepair and overall newer appearance, no older than Vivi or Lewis or Arthur themselves, but they didn't outage it by much. Only when Vivi stopped beside the broken and open gate did the boys in the back register it as their new haunt, so ordinary and simple as it rose from the slightly untrimmed and abandoned grass surrounding it, and with this came the racing of their hearts as they readied to bolt into a full on sprint. Even Vivi had to gulp down that dull beating in the back of her throat. This was it, possibly their resting place, some mini-mansion in the middle of nowhere and so far from anything they held dear save each other.

"So...here we are."

Vivi looked back at Arthur as he squeaked a little, his voice high-pitched and terrified as he absentmindedly crushed the dried sage in his tremoring hands. Lewis, too, was not exactly ecstatic about the adventure ahead, and it was with great slowness and steadiness that he closed and placed the journal in his hands back into the box. From the outside and despite the yellow tape, there was nothing wrong with the house, but everyone was put at least a little bit on edge with the fear that engulfed each individually. Even Mystery's tail had stopped wagging by the time Vivi found the nerve to open the door and step out, leading her boys like old times if under different circumstances.

"You got the supplies ready?" She questioned from the back of the van, opening it up to find the two still looking out at the house across the lawn without moving a muscle or even breathing. It was eerily silent, and Vivi continued to ponder whether she should truly continue on with this. She was shaking, but without her team behind her, she felt utterly powerless, "Reading devices are up and running, right?"

"You won't need them. I'm a ghost, Vivi, it'll be more than easy for me to sense another presences. Just...give me a moment to...prepare myself."

He was opening and closing his hands tightly, eyes no longer glowing as they dulled and and absorbed her appearance in the doorway gravely. In the time they had traveled, he had been just as curious as she was with every hunt, a solid foundation for her wonder to build upon, and yet with this...there were so many layers to this haunt, so many possibilities, and she had to admit that most of them ended in death no matter how many times she walked those paths. Vivi was determined to prove her point, yes, but she had to wonder if she was suicidal also. This was quite the undertaking, something she probably wouldn't walk away from unscathed if at all. Even Lewis' protection might not be enough to keep her safe. And then she looked at Arthur, his eyes so wide and trembling in the face of destruction that she had to pause even further to absorb him, remember every aspect of her best friend. Lewis would no doubt try and protect her from harm, but, in the face of danger, would he protect Arthur or watch him burn? Should she even bring the ginger along now that he had proved himself willing and open to tolerating Lewis?

"Let's just get this over with." Arthur muttered, his voice cold as his face turned to stone. Now he was determined, his hands wrapped tightly around the supplies with a backpack gripping his shoulders, "Let's head in there and get this done as quickly as we can. I want to get my pay and leave."

And so she lead her three boys across the yellow tape and along the edge of the yard and into the house, unlocked and waiting for them like a death sentence and just as hated and feared as one. Lewis and Arthur were filled with so much dread, even Vivi felt in her heart the doubt of her and their abilities, but something inside her masked that with a familiar curiosity that kept her head forward. There was a mystery ahead, something she could solve and pick apart, and is that not what she lived for in the first place? What was life if she denied her simplest wishes in order to survive?

Arthur was holding his breath, hiding slightly behind Vivi as they entered the darkened room before them with the flaring of Lewis' hair in response to the lighting. The house had to be three stories at least, large and well-made with an entry hall encompassing quite a few square feet. The floor was wood, the walls a warm orange with highlights of red and brown, and yet everywhere she looked Vivi could see only the remainder of flame. Scorch marks on the walls and scratched across the portraits painted a fine scene in front of her, and the screaming of her intuition didn't help calm her nerves much. In this situation, maybe it was better to run.

Despite her fears, Lewis had his head held high, searching with his eyes closed as though scanning with a monitor built into the back of his eyelids. One perk of being a ghost was the ability to sense other spirits without much trouble if any, and as he held a hand out to Vivi with the intention of leading her further into the haunt before them, he was surprised that he felt no more presence than a stage three poltergeist at max. He relaxed a little bit, feeling his worry rush away upon the slight breeze running through the near empty house as he let out a little sigh, "Come on, this way. I feel them strongest at the end of the hall. You sure we have all the stuff, right?"

Vivi nodded, taking his hand without a word and allowing him to lead her along as he began to float forward cautiously. Only the creaking of Vivi, Arthur, and Mystery's feet on the wooden floors beneath gave away any life in the house, and all was silent to the team as they entered the room across from them, a large and sweeping living area with a kitchen joined by a bar area. It was quiant, and it was nearly empty.

Upon entrance, it was clear that there was a draft as the place was many degrees colder than anywhere else in the house, not to mention drastically darker. Vivi searched around for a reason, finding that all the windows were black with an ash that condemned the space to a constant state of dusk without any natural light to seep in. The gashes in the walls were much deeper and more numerous in this room with splashes of copper and red outlining them, dry and chipping off. Some form of cutlery must have gouged deeply past the wallpaper, leaving the house with permanent scars. Vivi could see her foggy breath as it left her lungs. Mystery was growling, long and low again, his eyes red and blazing. It was eerie, and Vivi had a sneaking suspicion that this was the room where many other teams had met their ends.

"The family must have moved as much furniture and belongings as they could, but it doesn't look like they finished." Lewis entered the silence reluctantly, gesturing to the still set-up dining room and the near empty living room, "I'll have to step out of the room when you start smudging the sage, so tell me whenever you're ready so I can...you know, not get banished too."

Vivi nodded to acknowledge Lewis, her answer so small and quiet as she turned Arthur around with trembling hands and began to rummage through the backpack he carried, "We shoulder get started immediately. Will you be too far away, or can you stay in the general area?"

"I'll try and stay as close as I can, but that stuff really messes with my head, V. Just keep the door open, and if you need me, yell as loud as you can and I'll phase through. I'll hear you no matter how loud it gets in here, I promise."

Lewis seemed very worried, but with no further comment he stepped backwards and out of the room, watching very carefully as Vivi pulled out the salt and a pair of earmuffs along with the book Lewis had given her for reciting the Latin prayer. Very generously, she spread the salt over as much ground as possible, trying her best to weaken whatever was in the room with her as she began to whisper in that little voice of hers. Part of Vivi was hoping this was all just a misunderstanding, that the spirits would listen to the tiny pleas she voiced under her breath, but as the room continued to grow cold and dark she felt her first impressions on their little friend had been correct after all.

With a gulp and a slow blinking of the eyes, Vivi grabbed the sage from Arthur's pale knuckles and lit the bundle, allowing its smoke to fill the room. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Lewis back off a little, no doubt feeling the purifying effects of the thickness that filled the room like a fog. Her throat was dry and young as she opened the book, but with as much confidence as she could muster Vivi recited the Latin prayer word for word in the hopes that it would at least weaken the angry spirit within the house. She knew she wouldn't be able to see them, knew she was blind in the house of a poltergeist, and yet her eyes were peeled and her senses alert for any change that would meet them.

It was sudden, a flash of heavy weight upon his head that pushed him down, so much more powerful than his young and faded soul, so much older and wiser. At first he thought it to be the sage playing tricks on his mind, but as Vivi danced around the room with the flaming bundle leaving trails of grey to follow her dutifully, he could feel the weight grow angry. He could feel whatever ghost was there growing more and more frustrated, their original disinterest turning to full on hatred. What Lewis had thought was no more than a stage three poltergeist was truly just as deadly as his grandma's stage five, only in another room and without thought towards Vivi.

Now, the entirety of this poltergeist's rage was focused on her.

"Vivi, the poltergeist is-"

His voice was raised frantically from the entrance of the doorway, but to no avail. Just as his words began to leave his mouth, the housewide speaker system was raised to a shattering volume, screaming eighties music at an earshattering frequency. Everyone jumped, Arthur scrambling to place earmuffs on Mystery's head after adjusting his own and making sure Vivi was taken care of, and although the loudness and surprise of the sudden contact was inconvenient Vivi and Arthur thought nothing more of it. They were scared, oh yes, but as Lewis felt with growing power the danger they were in he could tell that they were not nearly scared enough.

Vivi continued smudging and reciting the prayer dutifully, screaming at the top of her lungs and taking the sudden noise and turmoil to mean that her banishing methods were working, that the ghost was fighting to fend her off. Lewis could feel that the opposite was true with every second passing-now the ghost was just pissed off and growing even moreso with every minute. This was not good, and with all the noise leaving his contact with Vivi suffering, he had no way of telling her of the very real danger she was in. He gulped, looking down at the salt covered floor in front of him and cursing the world for giving ghosts such a bad lot in life.

Lewis tried to take a floating step into the room, hoping he could bypass the spikes beneath him with the strength of his flying powers only to find that the sage had weakened his abilities considerably. He fell to the the ground, feet smashing into the burning salt below as he howled out in pain. With frantic and quick movements, he threw himself back out and into the hallway where even the sage was still scarce, taking a couple of deep breaths to will away the unbearable needles shooting up from his feet and gripping his limbs in an unbreakable lock.

Was there really nothing he could do with Vivi in so much danger, right in front of him?

So committed to the job, she continued to keep her voice loud and clear with the dancing Latin rolling off of her tongue so delicately, but as the din surrounding her and the team was accompanied by the banging of pots and pans in the nearby kitchen and the opening and slamming of every door in the house, it was clear that her words weren't getting her anywhere. Bracing himself for the definite pain ahead, Lewis jumped into the room and pushed away all of the feeling in his feet as the door slammed hard just moments behind him. It was with his arrival into the room that Vivi's smudging sage was thrown for her hand, and by some stroke of unlucky chance it landed smack dab in the middle of Lewis' face. No more able than a bird with a bag over his head, Lewis was stunned and paralyzed as the sage fell to his feet, the smoke rising into his face continuously.

Arthur, hand reaching out to Vivi in an attempt to race out of the room, was thrown back hard against the wall with a short scream and a groan of pure terror and pain, feeling his jaw crack as he hit the house by some inhuman force. With every ounce of his strength and stars climbing into the range of his vision, he stood back up and tried his best to continue his trek back towards the girl, but he was weak with fear and bodily injury, no more than a crippled fly to the poltergeist as its presence spread. Even as Lewis came to, the spirit within the house was pushing hard against his consciousness and using the numbing sage to its advantage rather. Whatever beef this poltergeist had was with Vivi alone, and it was with a sense of pleasure that it held Lewis and Arthur back, tinges of warmth readily available to Lewis as the intentions of death were made clear by the poltergeist.

They wanted nothing to get between them and Vivi, and with an inhale of breath, Lewis could feel the house truly come to life. In the air around her, all the items in the immediate vicinity began to levitate. The terror was so real in her eyes, she couldn't even scream.

The doors were opening and closing at such a rate now that they bore holes into the walls. Drawers and cabinets in the room and kitchen, joined together, were pulled from their tables and stands and thrown across the room in a flurry of frustration and rage, and back by the kitchen Arthur could see silverware rising from their homes in the cupboards to point menacingly at the girl in the middle of the room. A cheap TV, plugged in and sitting on the floor rather than the TV stand and almost definitely temporary, turned on to loud static over the household sound system while rocks began falling out of nowhere, presumably from the ceiling. The three untrapped companions looked on at Vivi with their determination wavering, because all was utter chaos, and no one could reach her.

"Arthur, hide underneath the table over there, shield yourself!" Lewis cried out, forgetting any past anger for a few moments as he spotted the stones above their heads. With each new wave, the downpour of pebbles grew more and more into boulders, and Lewis could see the situation turning deadly quickly if the ginger didn't get out of the way soon enough. Despite acknowledging that he had heard Lewis over the deafening din surrounding them, Arthur continued to fight towards Vivi, his eyes forward and unwavering as his robotic hand reached forward, growing dented with every rock against the shining surface. Arthur knew that he was getting pelted by stones and that the last drawer to come flying by had been awfully close to his head, but he wasn't going to let a few bruises get in the way of saving Vivi. In any case, he thought sullenly to himself, she would do the same. Each and every time, Vivi would come for him. This was the least he could do for her. This was his only chance.

"Arthur, please! Go back!" She pleaded with tears clear in her voice, spotting her best friend as he fought with a grimace distorting his face, but that request only made his struggles more real. Even Mystery was now fighting against him rather than with him, trying to push the boy back and away towards safety, but that wasn't going to stop Arthur. To see her so wide-eyed and helpless, the drill sergeant turned to a child by the isolation of a poltergeist, made him fight even harder to reach her against wind and stone and pleading eyes, even. With every rock to his temple she could feel herself growing desperate, and she turned to Arthur with a vortex of flying rocks and wind swirling around her only to watch him struggle, fight, and fail. She was unable to do anything as the ghost within the house grew angry, and it was with that determination in his eyes that she watched him thrown hard against the back wall once more with her dog close behind, the force dizzying to even her. Like a ragdoll, Arthur and Mystery fell to rest, unconscious, on the ground across the room from her.

Her cry was the only thing heard then over the clashing noises of the living room, her arms reaching out towards him only to pull back quickly as the force of the wind whipped her elbow the wrong way, broken. As she was shouting out to Arthur, nursing her elbow with a cradling hand and tears in her eyes, she could feel something like a gaze on the back of her neck, the watchfulness of an angry shadow following her moves and growing angry as she paid such close attention to Arthur but not the watcher. Something wasn't right with this room, and as she pulled her head to the side and swung around, it was only by inches that the racing knife missed her.

Using only her intuition as a guide, she was saved only to have that knife go through Lewis' head instead. He phased quickly, feeling it pass by him like a cramp before sticking in the wall with only the handle to show, thrown so quickly and with such speed that it completely passed through save the black and grey grip. He turned around, staring at the knife but not quite absorbing what had happened, feeling blank and empty as his eyes grew wider and wider. Vivi was in more danger than he had ever imagined, dancing on the thin line of death and losing her balance as her toes failed to keep her upright. If that knife had been just a little faster, or ever so slightly more to the right...

No, he couldn't think of what could have happened. All of his energy, no matter how minimal, had to be centered around saving Vivi now. He looked back towards her, dismissing the knife and hoping it would stay in the wall as it was now, still and unmoving. But still his heart began to race, and still he feared this would be her end as the vortex had quickened and the stones that twirled around her were joined by the silverware from the kitchen in their deadly dance. He could see her eyes, wide and crying and helpless as she screamed without reaching his ears, and how they glowed so faintly of that same pink he had seen when she remembered him. Her feet were off the floor now as she was lifted, the silverware and knives grazing her skin and leaving faint reminders on her canvas skin with red blood paint to jump forward eagerly, and she was floating in the air with arms thrown back and head tipped. He felt her fall unconsious, his tether blinking and flickering within his beating heart. He had to do something fast, before that flickering went out completely.

And so he kicked the sage out from next to his feet, ignored the burn as best he could from the salt against his shoes, and began the treacherous journey to Vivi. His head was swimming, mind racing alongside his heart as he ran and shouted a war cry through the vortex of noise. Each blade went through him, every stone passed along as though he were no more than the air surrounding him, but the poltergeist was fighting his advances with every ounce of their very strong being, pushing against him as he fought valiantly against them. With every step he fell into the deepest pits of hell, with every inhale of breath he could feel the sage burning his soul and eating away at his consciousness, but still he walked forward and still he made progress. This was for Vivi, and every breath he took from this moment on would be in her memory and by her life.

He broke through to her suddenly, falling forward and taking only a moment to gather his scattered conscious with his eyes on Vivi. With every round, the knives cut deeper into her skin, the rocks left bigger bruises and dents, and it was clear a larger stone had left her with a nasty bash on the temple, likely a concussion. It was getting worse progressively, and so it was with all of his power that Lewis solidified himself and enveloped Vivi best he could. His arms covering her sleeping body and his hands pulling her even closer to him, her small vessel pressed against his giant chest, the closeness to his tether gave him strength. A quick burst of energy sparked the air around him, the flames usually reserved to his head sending a small rush of fire to fight against the vortex and finding the heat effective as the knives fell momentarily and the whirlwind itself faltered for a few seconds.

This gave Lewis an idea.

Bracing himself, Lewis shot him and Vivi out of the vortex and towards Arthur and Mystery, ramming into the wall with a jarring slam and falling much like the ginger had back to the floor below. With the target gone, the tornado began to slow to a gradual and confused crawl, lazily twirling out of habit moreso than the original and ordered anger. It was with this confusion that Lewis grabbed Arthur, Mystery, and Vivi as close to him as possible, curling around them with arms a fire blanket to allow himself to explode. In a flash of pink light, the house was engulfed in flames and purged of darkness.

When the light died away, the silverware fell to the ground in a clatter of metal, the sound was abruptly cut off, the doors and cupboards silenced and steadied with the calming of a poltergeist. Lewis could feel it, the screaming and dying breath of a spirit, but as the presence fell away into the abyss it was so destined for from the get go he felt himself relax. This was it, the poltergeist had been banished by his superior flame because, when Lewis was with Vivi, he was stronger than any petty and vengeful spirit.

And then he remembered Vivi, and he felt the blood against his chest, and he knew before he opened his arms that she was bleeding out against him.


End file.
